1 

\ 



Price of this Pamphlet, $1.50. Price of the Original Work, $70.00. 



EGYPT'S Place in History. 



A PRESENTATION. 



By MRS, BALL. 



'Altera nianu fert lapidem, altera panem ostentat." — Plautus. 

' O mihi tam longse maneat pars ultima vitafc, 
Spiritus, et quantum sat erit tua discere facta!" — Virgil. 



BOSTON: 
LEE AND SHEPARD. 

1868. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 



s Place in History. 



A PRESENTATION. 



By MRS.. DALE. 



"Altera manu fert lapidem, altera panem ostentat." — Plautus. 

" O mihi tam loiigas maneat pars ultima vitae, 
Spiritus, et quantum sat erit tua discere facta!" — Virgil. 




BOSTON: 
LEE AND SHEPARD. 

iS68. 



EGYPT'S Place in History. 



*<' -^ ^ O 



r^ 



A PRESENTATION. 



^^j£^ 



Suylooiytu^ ^^^iMty) 



By MRS., ball. 



"Altera manu fert lapidem, altera panem ostentat." — Plautus. 

" O mihi tam longse maneat pars ultima vits, 
Spiritus, et quantum sat erit tua discere facta!" — Virgil. 




i 

BOSTON: 
LEE AND SHEPARD. 

iS68. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 

MRS. DALL, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 






C AMBR IDG E : 

PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



PREFACE. 



""\7'OUR work is not finished," wrote Bunsen once to 
Max Miiller, " when you have brought the ore from 
the mine. It must be sifted, smelted, refined, and coined, 
before it can be of real use, and contribute to the well-being 
of mankind." These words confront me with their dis- 
couragement, as I send away the last proofs of this pamphlet. 
Yet I think, if Bunsen were here, he would appreciate the 
motive which makes me risk the mortification which may 
come from obvious incompetency, and persist in sending 
these sheets through the press. 

If there were, in this country, a single periodical which 
would consent to publish one or two representative articles 
in every issue, there would never have been any need of 
this publication. Papers, of a kind which have given to 
Sainte Beuve a European reputation, have no acceptance 
here. Theological Reviews want brief summaries, or the 
wretched dogmatisms of nameless critics. Even the 
" North-American " prefers the theories and conclusions of 
our own scholars, to a clear resume of the labors of the 
best foreign students. To my mind, the resume is more 
useful than the criticism ; for I like to judge things for 



VI PREFACE. 

myself, and am not very grateful to men who retouch mas- 
terpieces before they exhibit them. 

It is not enough to say, that there is no scholar in 
America capable of criticising every department of Bun- 
sen's work. There is no such man in Europe ; and my late 
correspondence with scientific men, in reference to the mat- 
ters here brought out, shows me that those who worked for 
him worked each in his own line, without the least idea to 
what their united labors were tending. It was left to Bunsen 
to harmonize the materials, and show the bearing of the 
facts on each other, and on his own theories. 

Neither Dr. Birch nor Lepsius could tell me what prompted 
Bunsen to use the eccentric period of 21,000 years, instead of 
the universally accepted 25,000, to designate what he calls 
the nutation of the ecliptic. I do not present the conclusions 
of Bunsen to the public, because I am sure that they are all 
sound, because I am prepared to defend them right and 
left, or because I believe that none of them will ever be im- 
pugned. In the main bearing of his chronological scheme, 
I have perfect faith ; yet that many a side-prop will perish, 
I think, is very likely. But we never can have grand and 
thorough investigation, until some one disregards prudence, 
and risks collateral failure. No one understood this better 
than Bunsen himself. When he threw his great bridge of 
thought across the ages, a pier was often needed, for which 
the past had provided no solid support. Upon any tena- 
cious foundation, were it only of mud and straw, our scholar 
was willing to erect a temporary structure, quite sure, that, 
after the arch was once projected, the continuous frame- 
work would hold it firml}' in its place ; and the perishable 
material might be gradually and safely replaced, at need, 
from the quarries of the future. 



PREFA CE. Vll 

What I especially value in Bunsen is his estimate of the 
work necessary to be done, before we can decide the age of 
man, of history, and of revelation. 

The special boon which will be conferred upon theologi- 
cal students, by a familiarity with his conclusions, is just a 
little — modesty ! 

They will understand better what their own speculations 
involve : they will hesitate, before adding another to the 
stupid dogmatisms of the world. They will find in him a 
sincere reverence for God and Truth. They will see how 
all theories and superstitions sink into insignificance before 
the actual facts. They will see that every year clears up 
mysteries, presents discrepancies, and annihilates dreams. 
Above all, they will perceive that the most truly religious 
man of his time, Bunsen was also the only man, so far, to 
suspect the breadth and depth of the preparatory work to be 
done in Scriptural Interpretation. There is genius in the 
mere conception of such toil as he has undergone, — some- 
thing godlike in the sustained strength and insight with 
which it was carried through. 

But if he knew how to deal with " weightiest matters of 
the law," he knew also how to throw an infinite charm about 
all literary subjects. The personal enthusiasm which the 
man created in his lifetime was something extraordinary. 
One of the earliest impressions made upon me, in child- 
hood, was of the tumult of love and wonder excited in 
American travellers, by interviews with him they called 
" The Chevalier," while he was still unknown and young. 
In Switzerland and England, no less than in Rome, he was 
the delight of all who met him, — a feeling Dean Stanley 
has well expressed in his recent Preface to the English trans- 
lation of Bunsen's "God in History." "How thrilling," he 



VIU PREFACE. 

says, "was the moment in which I first saw the beloved 
friend of Arnold, of whose gifts and graces we had been 
taught to expect so much ! How rare a sight were those 
singular re-unions of all that was most distinguished in 
London societ}^ ! There was to be met the young Sanscrit 
scholar,* introduced to the English world under his fostering 
care, to accomplish the mighty work of editing the Veda, 
and stimulated by the same genial encouragement to give 
us also the precious fragments and chips of his German 
w^orkshop. There was more than one rising and wayward 
genius, then lingering in the outer courts of the church or 
world, who seemed, in the sight of that benevolent and 
beaming countenance, to understand how devils could, by a 
mere look, be cast out, and flee away. There was the 
ever-flowing fountain of knowledge, old and new ; the 
story of many a stirring incident in foreign lands ; the anti- 
cipation of many a prospect, bright or dark, which coming 
events have reached." 

Any one might be proud to have the right to introduce 
this man and his work to popular regard, /do it only be- 
cause it is impossible to understand modern Biblical criti- 
cism, without some knowledge of his labors and services ; 
and because it is customary to find them denounced and 
misrepresented in most unexpected quarters. 

If this small edition of my pamphlet should lead to an- 
other and larger, I shall add to it a table of all the kings of 
Egypt, from Menes to the last Sebennyte, in chronological 
order, with their individual relations to the monuments of 
the country, and general history, briefly expressed. I have 
prepared it for my own use ; but it seems absurd to print it, 
unless some demand should arise. 

* Professor Max Muller. 



PREFACE. IX 

I have taken no liberties with Bunsen. When I express 
my own opinion, or explain his mysteries, or follow up his 
illustrations, I think I have always made my share in the 
matter clear. 

By carefully working out his projections, I have altered 
some misprinted numerals in his tables, which disfigure 
his own book, and perplexed me for months. 

In the table of " Dispersion," on the sixty-ninth page, I 
have risked the insertion of Mts. as an abbreviation for 
" mountains " (near Lebanon) , in the place of Mas^ which 
stands in his own table, and which no one has ever ventured 
to explain. 

When he asserts, that, "since the Armenian version of 
Eusebius, the authority of Berosus is undisputed," I re- 
tain the unimportant assertion, simply because I have seen 
it disputed. 

When he identifies Kedor Laomer, on Rawlinson's au- 
thority, with Kedor Mapula, I retain it as a sample of an 
unsatisfactory statement. 

When he speaks of the Egyptian influence, still exerted 
over our medical practice, I strengthen his illustrations ; and 
I could not refrain from adding, to his happy guess about 
the eras of migration, the confirmation furnished, since his 
death, by the discovery of the present practice of the Jews 
of Cochin China. It was furnished me by an eminent Ger- 
man Rabbi. 

When I encounter variations of spelling, as an instance 
of which I may give the name of Raamses, spelled alter- 
nately as Ramses, Raamses, Rameses, Ramessis, and 
Remesis, I adhere to the mode which seems to show some 
phonetic value. I occasionally change a C to K, to show 

ii 



X PREFACE. 

philological relations, although I may adhere to either 
letter throughout the body of the statement. 

I am very well aware that Bunsen founded some unimpor- 
tant theories on some mistaken valuation of the tablet lite- 
rature of China. If the error should be great, that section 
of the subject will be worked up again in the light of Dr. 
Legge's revelations. The mistake casts no reproach upon 
the author. Those of us who recall the Latin translation of 
an arrow-headed inscription, once supposed to commemorate 
the neighing of the horse led by the groom of Darius, king 
of Persia, and remember how confidently it was relied upon, 
a few years since, by the most eminent philologists, have 
been amused, of late, by the new version, which dispels 
the fable, and proves the inscription to commemorate the 
natural productions of the district. Not on that account, 
however, do we distrust the scholars. When enthiisiasm 
suggests an inference, honesty soon discovers the error. 
Bunsen's eyes were, for the most part, clear, and his pur- 
pose was wholly so. 

Although I am aware that my own opinion, in reference 
to the matters treated in this book, is of small importance, I 
cannot send out this pamphlet without saying here, as I have 
said in private repeatedly, without eliciting any sympathy, 
that it seems to me purely chimerical for Bunsen to have 
based his chronological scheme on 21,000 years, rather than 
25,000, or, more accurately, 25,791 years, the recognized 
period for the nutation of the ecliptic, for the revolution of 
the seasons, or the describing of a circle in the Heavens by 
the north pole of the earth. 

What tempted him to pitch upon an arbitrary number of 
years, — which no one remembers, which no one will recog- 
nize, and which is, if I understand it, an imaginary period, 



PREFACE. XI 

being the time it would take for the revolution, if it were not 
for a certain delaying element in the axis of the earth it- 
self, — I cannot imagine. 

My common sense assures me that there is reason in this 
objection, though scientific people look as if I had suddenly 
gone mad, whenever I propose it. On this account, al- 
though it does not in the least disturb Bunsen's scheme, 
nor impair his conclusions, I had determined to say it 
boldly in print, when the first " crumb of comfort " was re- 
ceived from a most unexpected source. 

As I sat here writing, there came to me, from Worcester, 
the "Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society," at its last 
annual meeting, Oct. 21, 1867. In the report of my friend, 
Mr. Haven, I find it suggested, that this very " revolution 
of the seasons " may account for " Icelandic literature and 
civilization, and for Pre-Columbian explorations of the 
Northern- American coast;" and, in connection with this, 
he prints the following note : — 

" It is a scientific theory, that, by the conical movement of the 
polar axis of the earth, which causes the precession of the Equi- 
noxes, the northern and southern hemispheres are subjected to 
influences increasing or diminishing their average temperature. 
When the northern half of the globe is growing warmer, the 
southern half will, in an equal proportion, be growing colder, 
and vice versa. The entire revolution has been calculated to 
require twenty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety-one years. 
It has been noticed, that, since the middle of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, the climate of all northern countries has gradually become 
colder, and the line of tropical vegetation has retreated towards 
the south, while the culture of the soil has been actually abandoned 
in latitudes where it was once practicable and productive. Thus, 
in the twelfth century, agriculture, commerce, and letters flour- 
ished in Iceland, which was the seat of a prosperous civilization. 
Communities of colonists existed in Greenland, having villages 
and churches and cultivated fields, like those of Norwav and 



xii PRE FA CE. 

Sweden ; but they were cut off from all communication with 
the rest of the world, and probabW destioyed, b}' the accumula- 
tion of ice, which has, for centuries, prevented approach to 
that side of the country-. The glaciers of the Alps, it is well 
known, are extending. Roads, pastures, and even sites of hab- 
itation, formerly used and occupied, are now covered with 
perpetual snow. The advance of the glaciers, however, is not con- 
tinuous, but dependent upon the character of the seasons. In very 
drv vears, less snow is created, and the line of fi ost retreats ; but, 
in each successive generation, the limit of vegetation is percepti- 
h\y lower. 

" The inference is, that, in the northern hemisphere, another 
period of arctic temperature, over nearly its whole extent, is ap- 
proaching, bv slow but sure advances, and will culminate in 
about twelve thousand 3'ears, provided tliere is no interference, on 
the part of phvsical laws, whose nature and influence have not 
3 et been ascertained." 

It will be seen that Mr. Haven estimates this period as I 
do ; and tliat, if / have lost tny wits, he has lost his also. 
Do what I will, I cannot make 21.000 years represent, to 
m}^ mind, a real period : but such is uiy respect for Bunsen, 
that I cannot refrain from the belief, that he perceived some 
adequate motive for its selection. What that motive was, it 
is not probable we shall ever know, unless he has left it re- 
corded among unpublished memoranda. 

Mr. Haven's notes contain one oiher matter of interest to 
the readers of this pamphlet. 

I have stated that Dr. Birch found the evidences of highly^ 
advanced civilization, hidden in the Delta of the Xile. be- 
neath the accretions of more than 11,000 years. 

In the Delta, near Villeneuve, on the Lake of Geneva, 
iSIorlot assigns to the remains of the stone period a remote- 
ness of 7,000 years. 

Victor Gillieron believes, from similar inferences, drawn, 



PREFA CE. Xlll 

however, from wholly independent premises, that the piles 
still standing at the Pont de Thielle, between Lakes Bienne 
and Neuchatel, were driven 6,750 years ago ! 

In connection with what I have indicated of the labors of 
Hekekyan Bey, in the text, he tells us that Professor Carl 
Vogt, of Geneva, author of "The Natural History of Man," 
prefers the estimates of Hekekyan Bey to those of his Swiss 
cotemporaries. They accord very nearly, I believe, with 
those of Dr. Birch. In this report also, Mr. Haven tells 
us something of the work of Isaac La Peyrera, entitled 
"Prse-Adamitae," published in Holland, in 1655, which was 
condemned to be burnt as a heresy. The author undertook 
to YtvoYQi/rom the Scripture ^ that the human race had ex- 
isted for an indefinite period before Adam, — the words of 
Paul himself, that in " Adam all died,'" having started his 
mind upon this quest. He touches curiously enough much 
of Bunsen's ground, looks to the Esquimaux as the type of 
the Pre-Adamic races, and believes Adam to have been the 
ancestor of the Jews only, as Edom was the ancestor of 
the Phoenicians. 

Mr. Haven introduces this man's name merely to allude 
to an English version of his book in the library of the An- 
tiquarian Society. 

Peyrera's reasonings are moderate ; and he believes his 
own view, as Bunsen does, to be wholly consistent with rev- 
erent faith. It seems to me, therefore, that I cannot better 
conclude my Preface than by giving some account of this 
remarkable man, who believed little more than all the libe- 
rals of our day are expected to admit. 

Isaac de la Peyrera was born at Bordeaux, of a noble 
family of Calvinists, in 1594. He was highly cultivated 
for his time, and accompanied Thuillerie on his Danish 



XIV PREFACE. 

embassy. It was at Copenhagen that he entered on the 
course of StpttJitn'onale studies, which resulted in a work on 
Iceland, another on Greenland, and finally in his Pre- 
Adamite brochicre. 

The last was published anonymously ; and he was much 
surprised, while li\'ing tranquilly at Brussells. to find him- 
self imprisoned by the order of the Archbishop of Malines. 
In prison, he lingered many months, and was finally freed 
through the influence of Conde, who procured his pardon 
from Alexander III., on condition of his embracino^ the 
Catholic faith. Poor Peyrera probably thought that there 
was little to choose between the intolerance of Calvinist and 
Catholic, and did as he was bid. Conde, it is asserted, had 
been shrewd enough to avoid all mention of a repudia- 
tion of Pre- Adamite ideas, which he continued to hold in 
full faith. He was the librarian of the Prince of Conde, and 
lived in Paris to the age of eight}--two. Here he published 
his accounts of Iceland and Greenland, includincr an ac- 
count of the whale fisher}', then unknown in Europe ; also 
an account of the "Battle of Lens." fouoht bv Conde; and 
" The Restoration of the Jews." 

Then came in order the Pre-Adamite book in Latin, 
claiming that Closes' account of the origin of the Jewish 
nation in their ancestor, Adam, was one thing, and the ac- 
count of the Creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, an- 
other, with a long, unrecorded history between. Bavle's 
Dictionary supplies the names of those who hastened to 
refute this terrible heresv. 

He then published a " Letter," giving his reasons for his 
change of faith, and a series of letters addressed to the 
Comte de la Suze, to induce him to become a Catholic. 

The Hves of Pevrera and Bunsen furnish one of those 



PREFACE. XV 

parallels which are always intensely interesting. The 
Homologon will be seen to be the more complete, when I 
state that the last work of Peyrera's life was a Latin com- 
mentary on the Bible, corresponding to Bunsen's "Bible 
Work." The "notes" of Peyrera were translated into French 
by the Abbe de Marolles. The impression was arrested by 
the order of the Church ; but, in the " Bibliotheque du Roi," 
a few leaves may be found, which carry the reader through 
the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus. With the scanty 
resources of the sixteenth century, — before an arrow-headed 
inscription or hieroglyph had been interpreted, before a 
single expedition of investigation had been organized by 
Prussia, France, or England, before a lacustrine city was 
even dreamed of, — the clear and single eye of Peyrera 
penetrated to truths which seemed purely theoretical to his 
generation ! There are few things in Europe I would travel 
so far to see as these broken leaves, which interpret his 
thoughts upon Genesis. His book reads tamely by the side 
of the sceptical rejections of more modern writers. Let his 
fate teach us to be generous to the exhaustive labors of 
Bunsen ! 

God never tires of creating his prophets, the exponents 
of protest, investigation, and pure devotion. Why should 
men tire, while striving to fulfil his purposes? 



Caroline H. Dall. 



141, Warren Avenue, Boston, U.S.A. 
March, 1868. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 



PART I. 

A GENERAL SURVEY OF BUNSEN'S COMPETENCY, AND A 
SKETCH OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY.* 

XN the long annals of mankind, there appears now and 
then a name which makes the whole world debtor. 
More commonly we find men who, by a certain brute force 
of will, turn the current of its life, and impress themselves, 
or at least their eccentricities and idiosyncracies, indelibly 
upon its succeeding waves. Of this latter class was John 
Calvin. Of the former was and is Christian Carl Josias 
Bunsen. With our hand upon his last volume, the English 
edition of which appears as the posthumous work of both 
author and translator, it seems to us that human immortality 
never found a nobler illustration. The work which survives 
testifies to the surviving soul. His five volumes suggest 
a design so magnificent ; reveal a learning so wide, so 
varied, and so accurate ; the plan of their publication sug- 
gests a faith in humanity so sincere, a faith in Truth, the 
author's God, so unwavering, — that the study of them is at 
once a satisfaction and an inspiration. 

In history, Bunsen stands as Browning does in poetry, — 
self-possessed and erudite : having a passion for recondite 

* Egypt's Place in Universal History. An Historical Investigation, in 
five books. By C. C.J. Baron Bunsen, D.Ph., D.C.L., and D.D. Trans- 
lated from the German, by Charles H. Cottrell, Esq., M.A. ; with Additions 
by Samuel Birch, LL.D. Vol. V. London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 
i867. 

2 



6 EG7'PT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

learning, that few share ; but so infatuated with his passion, 
that he perceives neither his own superiority nor the indif- 
ference of his rivals. His volumes need an editor who 
shall send an electric thread through their loose beads of 
argument, reconstruction, and perception ; and, by drawing 
them within one coherent grasp, reveal alike the integrity 
of the pattern, and the simplicity with which it is wrought 
out. While waiting for this, we hope to draw attention to 
his studies, and put what is most valuable in them within 
the reach of those who can hardly expect to purchase one 
of the most expensive of modern books. It is the more 
important to do this, as a class of Egyptian scholars has 
now for the first time become possible. 

When Bunsen began to work, Goodwin, Le Page Re- 
nouf, and Dr. Hincks were busy in England ; Chabas, De 
Rouge, and Deveria, in France ; Brugsch, Duemichen, 
Lauth, Lepsius, and Pleyte, in Germany ; with a corps of 
assistants in each country, employed as translators or tran- 
scribers. No sooner did one of these men complete any 
section of his work, than it was published, or copied and 
sent to the others, that each might have the advantage of 
the labors of all. In especial, Lepsius and Bunsen ex- 
changed papers, and published their great works in sec- 
tions, that all possible light might be furnished by both at 
each advancing step. There was never a finer example 
of true communion in scholarship : each man fired with the 
zeal of knowledge, emulous only as to who should serve 
most ; differing each from the other to the end, as to some 
important particulars, but never losing, through all, the 
sense of brotherhood and active trust ; and each holding 
back the results of his own labor, till he had examined the 
work of the other. 

Still greater obstacles to a popular knowledge of this book 
than the severe study it requires, may be found in the extent 
of acquisition demanded to make the reading of it profitable, 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 1 

and the great cost of the volumes themselves. Men may 
learn to study in time ; they may grow in patience with a 
plan necessarily cumbersome ; they may kindle into admira- 
tion, and acquire general learning, so as to fit themselves 
for appreciation : but there is no hope that the cost of these 
volumes will greatly diminish. That the Messrs. Longman 
should have been willing to furnish a font of hieroglyphic 
characters, at a cost such as is usually assumed only by 
foreign governments, seems somewhat like a miracle, and 
shows a generous zeal which this author was entitled to 
kindle. 

No books ever published contain ampler learning of the 
sort that clergymen ought to acquire ; none bear more 
directly, or with more telling force, on the modern debate as 
to the historic value of our Scriptures : yet they are books 
which it is hopeless to suppose that more than one clergy- 
man in five hundred will ever glance over, much less study 
or possess. 

In this country, we suppose, no man exists who is qualified 
to criticise them adequately. Is any qualified by knowledge 
of the great geologic convulsions which have prepared the 
globe for the habitation of man, he will fail, perhaps, in 
knowledge of the distribution of races, and of the philologic 
suggestions to be found in their own names, and those of 
their earliest localities. Should he fortunately be familiar 
with philologic ground, he may fail in intimate acquaintance 
with those remains of ancient literature which bear all the 
more truly, because indirectly, upon the great problems to 
be solved. Should he have mastered these, he must turn 
his attention to the sacred books and traditions of all Central 
Asiatic nations ; our own Scripture must be set over against 
the Zend, the Vendidad, and the Vedas ; and the absence of 
all tradition of a deluge in China and Egypt accounted for. 
Should he find himself competent to this problem, a severer 
one confronts him : he must arm himself with a special 



8 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

knowledge of the Semitic languages ; and, when these have 
become familiar as his mother tongue, he must be prepared 
for a hieroglyphic or hieratic text, and not shrink from an 
investigation of the modern Coptic. Nor can he proceed 
without the widest general culture : for the history of Phoe- 
nicia must be ransacked for suggestive points ; and rare 
mathematical and astronomical knowledge is required, that 
he may examine for himself all previous deductions as to 
the duration of cycles, the various means employed for the 
correction of the Julian year, and the possible origin of 
the various phases of Astral worship. Above all, he must 
be a man with his eyes wide open, who shall readily perceive 
the significance of all the small facts, daily coming into 
notice, upon the great problems to be solved. If we are to 
be governed by the estimate which Bunsen puts upon the 
labors of his English reviewers, in his fifth volume, England 
has produced no man better fitted for this work than the 
critics of our own country ; but we need not be so governed, 
for, of the fairness of the few reviews that have appeared, 
common sense is a sufficiently competent judge.* 

So far as Bunsen's reviewers have produced any effect 
upon the popular mind, it has probably been the creating of 
a certain distrust of Bunsen, founded upon the great differ- 
ence between his estimate of the period required for the 
evolution of human civilization, and what is ordinarily called 
" Biblical chronology." It would be well if we could get rid 
of this Biblical chronology at the outset. Surely, very little 
scholarship is required to show, that the Bible actually of 

* It is interesting to observe, that the same fond love of patient labor over 
minute details, w^hich tends to make women eminent observers in astron- 
omy, has already produced one Egyptologist, — Miss Corbaux. We find 
her, in 1855, writing an Introduction to a work on the so-called Exodus 
Papyri, by the Rev. J. D. Heath ; and, although she started with a false 
theorj^, which vitiated her results. Baron Bunsen gives her candid praise, 
as the first English author who has entered upon the discussion of this 
subject, and as having intuitively seized, in her starting point, one of the 
most important problems to be solved. 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 9 

itself makes no pretension to chronologic accuracy ; and 
that the system which goes by its name, and has so long 
been active in manacling clergymen and oppressing schol- 
ars, is only a mass of Rabbinical corruptions, still further 
vitiated by the well-meant, but most dishonest, efforts of 
Eusebius and other early Christians, to force the whole 
records of the race into a certain conformity with a few 
numerical suggestions in the body of Holy Writ. Wherever 
Bunsen finds a numerical statement in the Scripture, how- 
ever discrepant with actual facts, he expects to find an honest 
basis for the number, and looks for it.* It was as if by in- 
spiration that he lighted in the beginning upon the period of 
" 21,000 years for the nutation of the ecliptic," as the proper 
field in which to work out his problem, — certainly not too 
largfe, when we consider that Dr. Birch has found the evi- 
dences of highly advanced civilization lying beneath the 
mud of the Delta, at a depth where the successive accretions 
of 11,000 years must have hidden them ; and, if it is proper 
to judge of the age of long-buried lacustrine cities by the 
thickness of such over-deposits, why not admit the evidence 
when it relates to the manufacture of glass or the weaving 
of cloth? The 4,000 years of the Biblical chronology, 
Bunsen thinks an accurate measure of the beginning of 
national history on earth ; or, what is equivalent, the begin- 
ning of our consciousness of continuous existence, 

In the "Journal of Sacred Literature" for October, 1859, 
the author assumes a positive knowledge of early Egyptian 
history ; the self-complacency of which shows him abso- 
lutely unable to appreciate the slow accumulative processes 
of Bunsen's investigations, and clinches the objections to his 
statements, regarding the residence in Egypt, with the child- 

* A remarkable instance of this is to be found in the 215 years which the 
Jewish people were supposed to have passed in Egypt, — a numeration which 
he conclusively proves to refer to the period of their o;p;pressw?i, which they 
could not be supposed likely to forget, and beside which the pleasant mem- 
ory of the long period of prosperous residence faded into thin air. 



10 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

ish wonder, that, in the many attempts to reconstruct the 
extinct dynasties of Egypt, the statement in Isaiah, that 
^^ the Assyrian oppressed Israel without cause" should have 
been so strangely neglected! The passage (Isa. lii. 4), as 
it actually stands in the English version, gives some color 
to the reviewer's evident inference, that it was in Egypt 
that the Assyrian oppressed Israel : " For thus saith the 
Lord God, My people went down aforetime into Egypt, to 
sojourn there ; and the Assyrian oppressed them without 
cause." * Surely there is no tolerable Hebrew scholar who 
will not admit, that, in the original, these two clauses have 
only this to do with each other, — that they are the separate 
stages of a climactic statement : once that unhappy people 
had been oppressed in Egypt ; later, the Assyrian oppressed 
them without cause. f 

The " Dublin Review " for February, i860, if not as 
incompetent, is still more unfair. " In reference to the au- 
thenticity and credibility," it says, ''of the remains now 
ascribed to Manetho, Baron Bunsen does not hesitate to say, 
that the numbers of Manetho have been transmitted to us 
quite as correctly as the canon of Ptolemy." Now, nothing 
is more evident, throughout the five volumes of Bunsen's 
work, than the constant effort of the author to correct 
the text of Manetho from Eratosthenes, the papyri, and the 
monuments. So far as we can judge, Manetho fell into 
hopeless chronological confusion, by attempting to give the 
sum of the regnal years in each dynasty, without regard to 
the orderly succession of reigns. For example, let us sup- 
pose that a prince of the house of Nantef should reign forty 
years, and then associate his son with him, surviving the 
association for thirty years. That the son, then reigning 

*The whole difficultjlies in the punctu ation, and the absence of a proper 
rhetorical inflection. 

t Smith's Bible Dictionary, which echoes this criticism of the "Journal," 
manifests a personal hostility to Bunsen, which vitiates the conclusions in 
what should be some of the most valuable articles in that valuable book. 



EG7'PT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 11 

forty-two years, left his throne to a minor, a collateral heir, 
in charge of a regent who reigned twenty years. The heir 
might come to his throne at his majority, and reign thirty 
years, counting from the commencement of the regency but 
only ten in person. The actual period for which this house 
had been in possession of the throne, would be 40+42+20 
+10 ; but Manetho would count 40+30+42+20+30, — the 
difference between 112 and 162, — indicating the exaggera- 
tion into which his method would lead him in three genera- 
tions. This exaggeration is what Bunsen corrects, not out 
of his own imagination, but aided by the real State registers, 
deciphered since Lepsius. 

A writer in the " Quarterly Review " for 1859 (P- 3^^ 
ct seq.)^ remarks as follows : "Bunsen assumes that Mane- 
tho gave 3,555 years as the length of the Egyptian mon- 
archy, and he then makes a mere conjecture the keystone 
of his arch." Now this may be a false deduction, not merely 
of Bunsen, but of Lepsius and Boekh ; but it is not an as- 
sumption. It is a period wrought out by adherence to a 
theory based on acknowledged facts ; assumed not by one 
man, but the then leading Egyptologists ; and so little relied 
on by Bunsen as to be only once or twice adverted to. The 
reviewer goes on to object, that Manetho and Eratosthenes 
lived 3 ,000 years after the reigns their lists are supposed to 
authenticate; but what, in the mean time, has become of 
the contemporaneous lists on the monuments of the 3d and 
4th dynasties, of the papyrus coeval with Moses, yet har- 
monizing with both Manetho and Eratosthenes? Does it 
become any critic of Bunsen to ignore the "Book of Kings," 
by Lepsius? So much, then, to show the manifest inade- 
quacy of those who have endeavored to throw ridicule upon 
these magnificent labors, and to dissipate some bewildering 
mists. Fortunately for us, God provides against the natural 
incredulity of man. It is never left to any one person to stem 
the tide of historical unbelief. Converging lines of investi- 



12 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

gation, converging results of varied conscientious labors, 
sooner or later, burn all vital and necessary convictions into 
human consciousness. 

At a recent meeting of the Palestinian Exploration So- 
ciety, at Oxford, which met, we believe, to examine the 
photographs of the synagogue recently reconstructed at 
Capernaum, — the only building now to be identified in 
which it is known that Jesus of Nazareth once stood ; a 
building reconstructed, it is said, after all these years, with- 
out the loss of a single stone, — Sir Henry Rawlinson said, 
that the excavations now going on at Jerusalem would give 
us a more exact knowledge of a long period of Hebrew 
history, than we possess of any similar period in the 
Greek and Roman ; but an assertion like this, some time 
before, from Bunsen, met with no reception but ridicule. 
When, a little before his death, a new translation of a long- 
coveted papyrus was brought him, his attendant lamented 
that it would not be in his power to devote much attention to 
it ; but a joyful light beamed in the eyes of the prostrate 
scholar, and, as his dying hand added a few notes to the 
manuscript, he murmured audibly, " It will come so soon, 
it will come so soon, — the justification of more than I ever 
dreamed ! " Very lately, the French Minister of Public 
Instruction received a letter from M. Lejean, sent by the 
French Government to explore the Persian Gulf and its 
immediate vicinity. He believes himself to have discovered 
ante-Sanscrit idioms, — to use his own language, langues 
-paleoariennes^ — still spoken, in a district lying between 
Kashmir and Afghanistan, by certain mountain tribes ; and 
he thinks these languages more allied to the European 
tongues than to the Sanscrit itself. In the Persian Gulf, he 
has followed, step by step, the course of Nearchus, who 
commanded the fleet of Alexander, and of whose voyage 
some account is preserved in Arrian. He has also traced 
the ruins of two Persepolitan cities, whose names have been 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 13 

preserved, the Messambria and Hierametis of Nearchus. 
At the same time, Unger, the Viennese paleeontologist, 
writes from the pyramid of Dashoor, that in the unburnt 
bricks of which it is built, bricks moulded and laid at least 
as early as 3400 B.C., he has discovered manufactured sub- 
stances, giving evidence of the high civilization already 
claimed for that period. Recent excavations of Yemenite 
ruins show, through the Himyarite inscriptions in the cities 
of Southern Arabia, that a race speaking and writing the 
same language dwelt in ancient Abyssinia, and on the 
shores across the straits ; the certainty of a hitherto conjec- 
tured identity of races throwing much light on many points 
of Biblical criticism. Rawlinson tells us that the ancient 
Egyptians thoroughly understood the motive power of 
steam. The remains of fine Egyptian pottery in the oldest 
Etruscan tombs ; the more recent finding of glass bottles, 
with Chinese inscriptions upon them, in the oldest tombs at 
Thebes, — suggest not only the immense antiquity of an 
almost universal commerce, but show how little effect the 
most valuable discovery, even that of the art of printing, 
can have upon a yet undeveloped people. First discov- 
eries, like the discovery of sulphuric ether as an ansesthetic 
agent, seem merely tentative. This last discovery was 
useless, until a certain amount of general surgical skill 
made its practical employment necessary on the one hand, 
and safe on the other. So the art of printing has availed 
little in China, — so little, that its use never penetrated to 
the nations brought into the closest contact with that people. 
The cities of Bashan are at last uncovered ; and the enor- 
mous rollers of stone, on which King Og threw back his 
portal, are now revealed to modern eyes. On the other 
hand, the intelligent zeal of Mr. Wilkinson, the English 
consul at Saloniki, has proved the authentic use of the word 
"politarch," in the eighth verse of the seventeenth chapter 
of Acts. The use of this word, in relation to a city not 

3 



14 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

known to have any such officer, has been used as an argu- 
ment against the age of the original manuscript. The 
exhuming of a buried arch, bearing an inscription in honor 
of events which took place under the administration of 
certain "politarchs," has put that question to rest. While 
critics debate the possible authorship and antiquity of the 
books of Moses, we are forced to acknowledge the age 
and authenticity of the Turin papyrus, sealed into a 
sarcophagus nineteen centuries before Christ, and the 
anonymous, ritualistic "Book of the Dead," written at 
least four thousand five hundred years ago ; and, in more 
direct support of Baron Bunsen's work, we have a treatise 
recently published by the astronomer of the King of Egypt, 
Mahmoud Bey. The late viceroy. Said Pacha, ordered 
from him an astronomical investigation into the relation of 
the structure of the Pyramids to the dates of their erection. 
It was obvious that the great pyramid at Ghizeh was built 
when the rays of Sirius, in passing the meridian of Ghizeh, 
fell vertically on the south side. A prolonged calculation 
shows that this happened 3300 years B.C. The bearing of 
this calculation is seen, when we state that Bunsen had 
already fixed the year 3329 as that of the beginning of the 
reign of Cheops, by whom this pyramid was built. 

But, before giving an account of Bunsen's work, we will 
speak briefly of the man himself. 

Christian Carl Josias Bunsen, chevalier, statesman, phil- 
osopher, and theologian, was born, Aug. 25, 1791? at Cor- 
bach, the capital of the principality of Waldeck. He studied 
first at Marburg, and then under the celebrated Heyne at 
Gottingen. To his own natural bias was now added the 
impetus given by the influence of the greatest philologist of 
the time, — an enthusiastic arch£eologist, and a man whose 
reputation for integrity had alread}^ passed into a proverb. 
It was quite in keeping with the fact, that his first profound 
studies were pursued under the master who had done so 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 15 

much to revive a knowledge of Greek and Roman antiqui- 
ties, that he first came to distinction by winning an academ- 
ical prize, at the age of twenty-two, for a disquisition on 
"Athenian Laws of Descent." He then went to Holland 
and Denmark, to pursue at his leisure a careful study of the 
tongues spoken in Iceland, Scandinavia, and Friesland. 
In 1815, he began to study with Niebuhr, whose character 
and pursuits were still further adapted to educate him for 
the work he was to undertake. In 1816, he went to Paris, 
to study the Eastern tongues under Sylvestre de Sacy, then 
the first living Orientalist. In addition to holding the Persian 
professorship in the College de France, De Sacy was at this 
time rector of the University of Paris ; and he was a literary 
man of such value and distinction, that, finding it impossible 
to replace him, Napoleon had been obliged to retain him in 
office after he had refused to take the oath of hatred to 
royalty. His Arabic grammar and anthology are still in 
use ; and, as a Persian scholar, he has never been sur- 
passed. While Bunsen was at Paris, Niebuhr had gone as 
Prussian minister to Rome ; and, as soon as he quitted De 
Sacy, he joined his former teacher as secretary of lega- 
tion. He met at Rome the King of Prussia, whom he 
greatly interested by his marked Protestant ardor; and, in 
1824, several important changes were wrought in the rela- 
tions of the Prussian Church and State by his influence 
over the king. In 1827, he svicceeded Niebuhr as Prussian 
Minister ; but, not being able to influence the Papal See to 
the extent of his desires, he resigned his position in 1837, 
or rather exchanged it for that of Minister to the Swiss 
Federation. In 1841, he was appointed Minister to Eng- 
land, to consult the English Government on the formation 
of a Protestant bishopric, which he fondly hoped would 
secure the interests of reform ; and he was, later, more 
formally appointed Minister to the Court of St. James. At 
that time he wrote in German, and printed, we believe at 



16 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HI ST OR 7'. 

Hamburg, his work on " The Constitution of the Church of 
the Future," afterwards translated and printed at London in 
1847. It is probable that the political prejudice excited 
against this Prussian project, which all parties seem to have 
shared, created an impression unfavorable to the reception 
of his more scholarly work. Bunsen believed in the possi- 
bility of a Christian nation, — of a Christian state. The 
manner in which this Church was linked to cumbrous Prus- 
sian machinery made it seem to most men impracticable 
and absurd, a fair mark for ridicule, and gave to his own 
name and Gladstone's an unenviable prominence for the 
time. Niebuhr had studied at Edinburgh ; and, while with 
him in Rome, Bunsen had married the daughter of an 
English clergyman. From that time, England seems to 
have divided his affections with his native country, and 
some of his most valuable studies were pursued at the 
British Museum. At the request of his king, he presented 
to the Court of Prussia a memorial upon the formation of a 
constitutional government like that of England. He favored 
the cause of Schleswig-Holstein, and, b}^ a memoir to Pal- 
merston, protested against England's attitude in regard to 
it. Sympathizing with the Western allies, rather than with 
Prussia, he resigned his position, at the beginning of the 
Eastern war in 1853, and removed to Heidelberg, where he 
was at once regarded as the leader in all matters relating 
to Christian liberty. 

His most distinguished works, beside that under review, 
are "Hippolytus and his Times" (two volumes, Leipsic, 
1853), and "Complete Bible-work for the Christian Com- 
munity" (two volumes, Brockhaus, Leipsic, 1853). The 
latter work is divided into three parts, — the first giving the 
newly translated text of the Old and New Testament, with 
abundant notes ; the second is the completion of the first, 
containing Bible texts historically arranged and explained ; 
and the third consists of treatises on various subjects, such 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 17 

as the "Everlasting Kingdom" and the "Life of Jesus." 
This book had not attained its perfect form at the time of 
his death. 

" Egypt's Place in History " was published at Hamburg 
and Gottingen in five volumes, from 1845 to i860 ; and the 
English translation followed rapidly upon the German issue. 
The last volume, however, has only just come to this coun- 
try, having been published about the last of May. Its con- 
tents, which are at this moment of special interest to the 
scholar, may be briefly noted here. It contains, first, a 
final statement of the Problems to be solved ; then the Key 
to these problems. In this Key we have, ist, A solution of 
Problems exclusively Egyptian, under which the first and 
second problems of the third dynasty, and the problem of 
the builders of the Great Pyramids, are treated ; 2d, Chro- 
nological results connected with Biblical, Assyrian, Babylo- 
nian, and Greek synchronisms, giving points of contact 
before and after Solomon ; 3d, Results connected with the 
Problem of reconstructing the ancient ante-chronological, 
but epochal, history of Egypt ; 4th, Corollaries, philosophi- 
cal and practical. In this final treatment, Bunsen draws 
in the slides of his telescope, and rests upon the acknowl- 
edged Alexandrian chronology in reference to Egypt, — a 
chronology, however, which does not bring the construction 
of the Great Pyramid so nearly into the place assigned it 
by Mahmoud Bey, as his own theoretic extension. Then 
follows an Appendix, in which the Baron examines the 
position of his reviewers ; and then — that which gives to 
this work its special value, and puts it in the power of every 
scholar to become a critic, if he will — Dr. Birch's transla- 
tion of the " Book of the Dead ; " a Dictionary of Hiero- 
glyphics occupying 150 pages; a Hieroglyphic Grammar 
occupying 130 pages ; and thirteen selected Egyptian texts, 
with their translations, — these texts being among the 
most valuable for purposes of Bibilical criticism. This is 



18 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

followed by fifty pages devoted to a comparison of old and 
new Egyptian words, and to a comparison of these with the 
Semitic and Iranian : and, finally, we have the fragments 
of Philo Bvblus, with comments bv Dr. Bernavs, and a 
revision and Latin preface by Bunsen, completed, we be- 
lieve, only a short time before his death. 

That this pupil of Heyne, Niebuhr, and Champollion 
(with whom Bunsen studied at Rome in 1826) should be 
only half prepared for his great work, was manifestl}^ im- 
possible. The story we have told shows that he was fitted 
for it, not only by his philological and archaeological 
studies, not only by a rare knowledge of language, science, 
history, and governments, but by personal contact, pro- 
longed and close, with the most eminent scholars of his 
day in the same walks, by an ardent devotion to Protestant 
Christianity^ his love of Christian libert}', and his freedom 
from all fear that any efforts of his could shake the founda- 
tions of eternal truth. As a politician, he was from the 
beginning fastidiously conscientious. There is, indeed, 
one reason why those who know Bunsen well will hardly 
expect his labors to come to speedy appreciation. He was, 
as a man, far too well balanced to challenge immediate 
S3^mpathy : he held out his hand cordially to both the left 
wing and the right ; he could see truth and zeal on the side 
of his opponents. And while, on the one hand, he fear- 
lessly laid Theology under his scalpel, on the other, he 
treated its dead body with reverent consideration. Fanati- 
cism is far nio7'e acceptable to viankind than a radical tol- 
eration. 

Of the last months of his life we have no trustworthy 
account, although it is quite possible that such an account 
is in existence. His beautiful last words, spoken to the 
beloved English wife who leaned over his pillow, have 
floated across the Atlantic, and touched all our hearts : "In 
thv face have I seen the Eternal." 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 19 

We have now to consider the way in which Bunsen 
approaches the great historical problem he has attempted 
to solve. First, then, in reference to the period that 
he selects in which to evolve and develop the history 
of races. He was too shrewd a man not to see, that the 
greatest difficulty in the reconstruction of ancient history 
had always lain in the want of room in which to deploy 
the grand army of facts, — especially for the growth of 
language, according to the known conditions of its devel- 
opment. He wished, therefore, for a natural period, of a 
length which was sufficient to allow for the development of 
the earliest civilizations. As nothing seems to ordinary 
readers more chimerical than his selection, we wish to add 
a popular statement to the commonly incomprehensible 
figures of the scientist. It is well known to most people, 
that there is a marked change in the apparent position of 
the constellations since that was first recorded by the an- 
cients. To say nothing of the ante-historic periods, other 
pole-stars than ours have been in use at various times in 
the world's history. The axis of the earth does not point 
steadily to the tail of the Little Bear, but the North Pole 
itself describes a circle in the heavens. It moves towards 
the West ; therefore the constellations travel farther and 
farther to the East, which was early discovered by Chinese 
astronomers, and, before the time of Christ, by Hippar- 
chus of Rhodes. The common phrase, "precession of the 
equinoxes," is the strict way of expressing this fact. The 
change in the position of the axis is occasioned by the 
irregular attraction of both sun and moon. The greatest 
irregularity is produced by the moon ; but, owing to her 
own changes of position, she cannot produce it with steadi- 
ness, and therefore our axis describes its circle in the heav- 
ens in a tremulous way, — moving a little forward, and 
then a little back, and so on. There is no more delicate 
work for the astronomer than to consider all these forces, 



20 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

note their variations, and arrive at a correct result. New- 
ton did not succeed in doing it. D'Alembert and La Place 
did ; and, since the time of the latter, it is customary to 
say, that the axis of the earth describes its complete circle 
in the heavens in the space of 25,000 years; reduced, by 
the revolution of the apsides, to the 21,000, which Bunsen 
calls the "nutation of the ecliptic." 

Now, it is obvious to every one, that any considerable 
change in the position of the axis of the earth would create 
a change in the climate of the various zones ; and, as the 
development of the races of mankind has a great deal to 
do with climate, it was natural that a period which affords 
such changes should attract the man of science. But the 
21,000 3'ears allowed for this nutation of the ecliptic, pre- 
sents to the Northern Hemisphere, in which mankind have 
developed, two points, — one unfavorable^ in which the 
winter gains eight days of cold ; one favorable^ in which 
summer gains eight days of heat : and the cycle is supposed 
to have closed with the favorable period in the year 1248 of 
our era, the favorable circumstances attending to a degree, 
many years, both before and after that date. The unfavor- 
able point would be 10,000 years B.C., with a like attend- 
ance of unfavorable circumstances. Now, the work of 
creation would necessarily demand the finest influences ; 
and the great geologic changes, which are indicated by the 
flood, would be most likely to occur at the period of climatic 
depression. We take the period of 10,000 years b.c, as 
the proper period for the flood, and we go back 21,000 
years from the favorable point of one thousand two hundred 
and forty-eight in our era, to another corresponding to it, 
— 20,000 years B.C., — for the period of man's creation, 
which took place in the greatest possible fulness of light 
and life. 

He takes, as the basis of his chronological scheme, there- 
fore, the astronomical cycle of 21,000 years, — the period 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY, 21 

during which our summer solstice falls successively in every 
portion of the earth's orbit.* At present, as is well known, 
the summer in the northern hemisphere is at the time of the 
earth's greatest distance from the sun ; hence the season is 
longer and more temperate ; while, in the southern hemi- 
sphere, the summer is hotter and fiercer, the winter longer 
and colder, than in the same latitude at the north. Our 
summer season, reckoning from the vernal to the autumnal 
equinox, is thus eight days longer than our winter ; and 
this may be called, for us, the favorable portion of the 
cycle. The most favorable moment occurs when the sol- 
stitial point — that is, the sun's highest northern declination 
— falls exactly at the portion of the orbit farthest from the 
sun : this moment (which we may call the noon of the 
favorable period) fell, by the reckoning of astronomers, in 
the year a.d. 1248. 

But Bunsen supposes that a greater climatic change was 
wrought at the period known as that of the Flood, than 
would have occurred in the natural order of things. The 
slightest preponderance of matter at any point of the earth's 
surface will necessarily alter the relations of the poles to 
the plane of the ecliptic. Should this occur suddenly, by 
any monstrous volcanic action, such as would uplift a con- 
tinent, the change in the inclination of the axis would be 
very sudden, and might alter all the conditions of terrene 

* This period is obtained as follows : Adding together 50.1" (the annual 
amount of the retreat of the equinoctial point in the heavens, owing to the 
phenomenon called "precession of the equinoxes") to 11.8" (the annual 
amount of the " revolution of the apsides," in the contrary direction), we 
obtain 61.9" for the annual motion of the point of the earth's aphelion rela- 
tive to the nodes of the ecliptic ; and, dividing bj this the whole number of 
seconds in 360 degrees (1,296,000), we find the above number, 21,000 (more 
precisely, 20,985), for the cycle of the revolution of the seasons. 

In virtue of "precession," modified by "nutation," the terrestrial pole 
describes a tremulous circle in the heavens, of about 47° diameter, about 
the pole of the ecliptic, once in 25,868 years. The several stars which are 
thus made successively "pole-stars" to the earth, afibrd an important 
element in fixing some of the cardinal dates in Egyptian history. 

4 



22 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

life. If Greenland were to be loosed from the bottom of 
the sea, and were to float into the southern hemisphere, the 
whole climate of the globe would change ; nay? it is hardly 
too violent a supposition to say that the tropics and the poles 
might possibly change places. We have such evidences of 
convulsion stamped into the geologic history of the earth, 
— traces of tropical vegetation and mammoth existences so 
near the poles : traces of marine botany and ocean life on 
Alpine heights, — that it would seem as if such changes 
must have taken place, whether before or after the creation 
of man ; and, if so, the present inclination of the earth's 
axis may be a comparatively modern thing. The longest 
diameter of a planet must svray it to the sun ; and, when 
the substance is heaped up so as to bring this length into a 
new place, there will be an entire change of climate, gen- 
era, and species. Old coasts would sink, reefs rise, and 
seas disappear or be created. There seem to be indications 
of such changes in the positions of still other planets. This 
explanation, now^here offered in detail by our author, we 
are obliged to assume for him, or leave his conclusions as 
to the pre-delugic period in such uncertainty as must greatly 
deti'act from their usefulness. 

But this only gives to Baron Bunsen the blank paper on 
which he is to draw his chart. Let us see what it is that 
he realty has to do, and whether the task should be impos- 
sible. Let us suppose that the inhabitants of North Amer- 
ica, driven, by a submerging storm of sand and rain, from 
their own shore, with the traces of their civilization and 
every fragment of native literature destroyed, should seek 
a refuge in South America, and ultimately desire a map of 
the land, as it was before its terrible overflow. Behring's 
Straits, the Isthmus of Darien, the projecting peninsula of 
Florida, still suggest some boundaries. There is a tradition 
of the great lakes and Niagara, of the Alleghanies and the 
Rocky Mountains, and of the fertile bottom lying between. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 23 

drained by an enormous river, unlike any on the globe. 
An adventurous geologist visits the deserted land, finds the 
Rocky Mountains in their place, but has so little idea of 
the proper scale of things, that he does not go far enough 
off for the traces of Niagara and Plymouth Rock. He 
comes home, and rants about the delusion of those who 
believe in such places. There is no chain of lakes. As 
he descended from the heights, did he not touch the very 
sea-coast, at a place still inhabited by a degraded race, and 
called by an old name, Matagorda? They, too, had some 
old traditions about Washington, and Plymouth Rock ; but 
who would believe them? Meanwhile, the literary people 
have been busy. With no books of their own past to fall 
back upon, they have ransacked all Europe for fragments 
of old literature relating to the extinct nation. One copy of 
old Botta had been exhumed from the dust of libraries, 
and seems to give some color to the traditions they them- 
selves believe ; but, just as they are delighting themselves 
with the grim old chronicle, a multitude of copies of a cer- 
tain book are found beneath the fallen ruins of a portion of 
the British Museum. It is evidently a school-book, printed, 
for the instruction of children, nearly half a century later 
than old Botta, in 1859, ^^ London, Eng. ; and it consists 
of questions and answers, some of them running thus : 
e^. What countries lie to the south of the great lakes? 
A. Two : the United States and Washington. J^. What 
people inhabit these countries? A. White people, Indians, 
and the more civilized Mexicans. The literary people send 
in haste for the geologist. They hope, like Professor 
Cleveland, that they are " descended from the more civilized 
Mexicans ; " * but the geologist looks at the philologist, 
and smiles. "Mexicans!" said he, "that is what the 

* The school-book alluded to formed the subject of a humorous address 
by Professor Cleveland, at a consular dinner given to him, at Cardiff, in 
Wales. 



24 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

people call themselves, whom I found at Matagorda : they 
never heard of the great lakes. You may depend upon it, 
old Botta was writing an historical romance, — stupid work 
he made of it, to be sure." But there is one of the literary 
guild, a little more depressed than the rest : he holds up a 
book, once dressed in gayest colors. It is called "New 
America." "According to this," he says, "our ancestors 
were bold marauders. Somewhere near your Rocky Moun- 
tains, they had a grand harem, and preached the Gospel 
of Polygamy. Farther to the east, a tribe of Amazons 
lived ; they denied the possession of any high gifts to the 
male sexj but were themselves prophets, priests, and seers, 
whose sight reached back to an antediluvian period." 
" Polygamy ! " said the geologist, rubbing his forehead. 
" On the plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, I came 
upon an enormous mount. It represented a serpent wound 
round the Cosmic ^g^^ with his tail in his mouth. I thought 
then that it was accidental ; but we must send off a party 
to explore. What, after all, if we could trace these people 
to the polygamists of Eastern Asia?" — "No," interrupts a 
younger student. "I am sure I find traces in some of their 
fragments of an Egyptian connection. A certain sect must 
have worshipped the great eye of the world, — in short, 
Osiris ! " 

Now, in just such a position as this were the Egyptolo- 
gists, when Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone ; and 
the deciphering of the Tablets of Karnak and Abydos, 
and the Royal Papyrus, have produced upon this confusion 
precisely the same efiect that the exhuming of all the Rec- 
ords of the State Department at Washington, with their 
attendant documents, would produce upon our supposed 
friends in South America. 

Before coming to the historical results Bunsen considers 
himself to have attained, it is necessary to explain still 
another point, — the history of the Egyptian year. If any 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 25 

man of the present day wishes to prove himself descended 
from some remote, distinguished ancestor, he in the first 
instance traces the family of that ancestor as far down as 
possible, and then carries his own as far up as possible. If 
at the point of junction, where the keystone of his arch of 
evidence should be, he finds only a void, he must search on 
one side for that which may give indirect evidence of its 
previous existence. The fallen stone is often found far 
from its original bed. Now, in the genealogy of the world, 
the history of Egypt is this keystone. It is a bridge con- 
necting modern life with ancient ; and its well-kept registers, 
to which even Herodotus refers, abound in synchronisms, 
which assist us to reconstruct other histories as well. It 
would seem as if its golden sands, its dry atmosphere, and 
its perished civilization, had been permitted by Providence, 
in order that the secret of the world's life should be pre- 
served, and no foot of progress stamp out the traces of the 
world's early and uncertain march. The papyri, tablets, 
and sarcophagi of Egypt begin to decay when they are 
placed in Northern museums. We hope the time will come 
when scholars will press the erection of a museum on her 
own soil, which shall preservCj and not destroy, and of 
which all the powers of the civilized world shall become 
the guardians. The removal of colored bas-reliefs and 
frescoes has already proved conclusively, that the secret of 
their long preservation lies in climate, and not in the skill 
of ancient art. 

The Egyptians divided the year into three seasons ; 

viz., — 

1. The Green Season; 

2. The Harvest ; 

3. The Inundation ; 

— each consisting of four months of thirty days. Now, 
the beginning of one of these seasons, at the era when this 
division of time first occurred, is fixed for us by one of the 



26 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

great natural facts of the country. The first day of the in- 
undation invariably coincides, at Syene, with the summer 
solstice. Just at that period the waters of the Nile begin to 
overflow. The ordinary Egyptian year consisted of twelve 
months of thirty days each, with only five days added at 
the close. So, failing to count in the six hours of surplus 
time remaining at the close of each year, every four years 
a day was lost, and the season of the inundation was noted 
one day too soon. In 365 times four, or 1,460 years, it 
would be noted a whole year too soon ; and a whole year 
must be thrown in to correct the error and equalize solar 
and lunar notation. Therefore, every fourteen hundred 
and sixty -first completed a cycle by a sacred, festive 
year. 

The Egyptians had, besides, a civil year ; and we trust 
that patient attention will be given to our attempt to explain 
this in a simple way. The restoration of all the ancient 
chronology of Egypt depends upon the place of this festive 
year, which was observed as sacred to a very late period of 
Egyptian history ; and, from the later and certainly historic 
celebrations of it, we must ascend to the period of its insti- 
tution. Now, this kind of notation was in use in the time 
of Menes, the first recorded king ; that is, as early as 
3400 B.C. Let us assume, therefore, that, at the next 
previous point in time, when the first day of the first 
month of the season of inundation fell on the solstice, was 
the period of institution. It may have been 1,460 years 
earlier ; but it must have been as old as that. Here is the 
order of the seasons, each consisting of four months : — 

First Tetrameny, or Green Season. 

1. Thoth (opener of the year .... November. 

2. Paophi . December. 

3. Hathor January. 

4. Choriack February. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 27 

Second Tetrameny, or Harvest Season. 

5. Toby March. 

6. Mechir April. 

7. Phamenoth . . • May. 

8. Pharmuthi June. 

Third Teirameny, or the Intmdation. 

9. Pachon J"^y- 

10. Paoni August. 

11. Epiphi (Hebrew, ^^2*3, or yl(^2(5) . . September. 

12. Mesori October.* 

Now it is evident, that, when this system first came into 
use, the summer solstice fell on the ist of Pachon, and the 
winter equinox on the ist of Mesori. The Hebrews car- 
ried out of Egypt the name of the eleventh month, Efi-phi^ 
on the 14th of which they crossed the Red Sea. In the 
twelfth chapter of Exodus, it is written that they were at 
this time commanded to alter their calendar, and to begin 
the year with the month Ebib. We wish any words of 
ours could direct the attention of Egyptologists towards one 
important inference, hitherto neglected. It is about as well 
established as any point can be, that the year of Exodus 
falls between 1314 b.c. and 1320 b.c. Hillel, we believe, 
ascribes it to the year 13 14. Now, it is certain, that, if we 
can find the year, within this limit, in which the 14th of 
Epiphi fell on the first full moon of the spring, — about the 
14th of our April, at which date the Passover has always 
been celebrated, — we shall find the exact date of the Exo- 
dus. On the other hand, it would seem as if the modern 
Jewish practice, of beginning the year at the autumnal 
equinox, had some faint and hidden reference to the original 

* It is obvious that the English names attached to these months are not 
strictly accurate, — only approximate. For example, the first day of the 
period of the inundation, or the month Pachon, did not properly fall on 
the ist of July, but on the solstitial point, the 22d of June. 



28 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

place of Epiphi in the Egyptian calendar, or was adjusted 
to it by Hillel. 

Censorinus tells us, that the Egyptians had a great Sothiac 
year. It began whenever the sun rose at the same moment 
as the Dog Star. This could happen only once in 1,460 
years, when the solar and lunar years met and were made 
one. One such sacred year was recorded 1,322 years 
before Christ. Cycles began, therefore, in the 3^ears — 

4242 B.C. 
2782 B.C. 
1322 B.C. 

Now, we have seen that Thoth was the first month of the 
Egyptian year ; and its proper place was unchangeably 
fixed at 120 days after the solstice. It fell in the right place 
in the years — 

3285 B.C. 
1780 B.C. 

Of these five eras, 3285 * b.c. must have been the most 
remarkable ; for then the sun rose with Sirius at the solstice 
(or seemed so to rise), and the ist of Thoth fell on the 
required moment. f About this time, then, Bunsen supposes 
this calendar to have been instituted. We can see how 
they came, in time, to have two calendars. The civil year 
must begin with the first of Thoth, no matter how far it had 
slipped back from its place. The sacred Sothiac year must 
always begin at the rising of Sirius. They intercalated 
nothing, but noted the periodical loss, so as to interpolate 
one year into the calendar once in every 1,460 years. In 
one Sothiac cycle, the beginning of the year moved through 

* Bunsen does not explain ; but it would seem as if these two dates 
must have been conformed to the Phoenix cycle, and not to the Sothiac. 

t If we accept the astronomical conclusions of Mahmoud Bej, is it not 
quite probable that the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh was begun this year, to 
mark and commemorate these extraordinary coincidences.'' 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 29 

every part of the heavens ; which may possibly explain 
the mystical saying of the priests, when they told Hero- 
dotus, that, between the reigns of Menes and Sethos, the 
sun had twice risen in the west. That is, this movable 
solar 3^ear had twice begun at the indicated place in the 
heavens. 

It was only another way of concealing the sacred year, 
when it was said that the phoenix rose from its ashes once 
in 1,500 years. This name, so long believed to be that of 
a fabulous bird, is, in the original, equivalent to sceculum, or 
"period of years." Its story conveyed the error of the 
Julian year. The three periods of the Solar or Phoenix 
cycle had a sort of correspondence to the three divisions of 
the common year. The first day of the new year was 
placed unchangeably, as we have said, 120 days after the 
solstice ; and, when the rising of Sirius corresponded to 
this solstice, the grand cycle would begin with the succeed- 
ing new year. The secret was kept, but the key was 
preserved. We can find it in the story Plutarch tells of 
Hermes. Hermes played at dice with Selene (the moon), 
and won from her five days. Chronos and Netpe (the 
starry Time and the starry Space) , having been privately 
married, begat five children, — the five Planets. The Sun 
discovered it, and was enraged ; for there was neither 
Space nor Time for new stars. He cursed Netp^, there- 
fore, saying that her children should be born neither into 
month nor year. Netpe, in her distress, appealed to Thoth, 
god of wisdom and of stars. He, having embraced her, 
played again with the moon, and won from her the seventy- 
second part of every day in the year of 360 days. Out of 
these he formed five days, which he threw in at the end 
of twelve months. In these days, the waiting planets were 
born ; and not only they, but the five gods who live in 
them, came into the world. Osiris, Typhon, Horus, Isis, 
and Nepthys came into the world on these days : so the 

5 



30 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

sacred year was made up of the birthdays of the gods, — 
truly a " divine year " I * 

We have given to Baron Bunsen the blank paper on 
w^hich he is to draw his chart; namely, the 21,000 years. 
We will sketch the finished map lightly, according to the 
natural order of events, rather than to the order of investi- 
gation. Before we enter upon this work, one or two things 
must be fixed in the mind. The first historic king of Egypt 
is supposed to have reigned about 3,400 years before 
Christ ; but he united under himself twenty-seven different 
provinces, of a civilization already far advanced. He found, 
when he ascended the throne, a perfect language, and a 
ceremonial religion fully developed. His name was Menes, 
and he stands as the representative of the beginning of his- 
tory to Egypt. After his time, its history is divided into 
three parts : — 

1. The Old Empire, of the empire of Menes, lasting 
1,076 years, and ending with the thirteenth dynasty. 

2. The Middle Empire, of Hyksos or shepherd kings, 
mixed with subordinate native princes, lasting 922 years, 
and ending with the seventeenth dynasty. 

3. The New Empire, a revival of native Egyptian power, 
which expelled the Hyksos, lasting 1,286 years, and end- 
ing with the thirtieth dynasty. f 

It will thus be seen, that the history of Egypt contains 
the history of thirty different dynasties, or reigning fami- 
lies, — not necessarily Egyptian, only reigning in Egypt. 

* This Phoenix cycle, consisting of three periods of 500 years each, 
must have been founded on the Apis year, — equal to twenty times 360 
days ; that is, 500 years. This notation was probably an older method 
than the Sothiac of reaching the saine result; and was recognized by the 
grand multiple of the Apis and Sothiac cycles, which was supposed to 
produce a grand cosmic year. 

t Written lists of Manetho and Eratosthenes, statements of Herodotus, 
Diodorus, Apollodorus, and others, two monumental tablets, and several 
valuable papyrus lists of kings, furnish evidence in relation to these 
periods, beside that found in pyramids and tombs. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 31 

Thus, the twenty-eighth dynasty consisted of Cambyses, 
Darius, and Xerxes, better known in connection with 
Persia. At first, historians were determined that these 
dynasties should indicate famihes reigning in succession : 
but the truth is, that many of these princes were reigning 
together ; that the royal power of one or another was fre- 
quently maintained only in some remote province ; and, as 
to the numbers of the dynasties, they were given arbitrarily, 
and are no guide whatever to the order of succession. Thus, 
for example, the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh 
were all on the throne together ; the ninth and tenth being 
a continuation of the fifth at Heracleapolis, the seventh and 
eighth reigning at Memphis, and the eleventh at Thebes. 

We next proceed to give Bunsen's historical and astro- 
nomical checks for the age of the human race. 

1. Mankind was created, geographically, on the north- 
ern slope of the Hindu Kush, and its continuation to the 
Taurus and the open Polar Sea, in which the Ural was 
then an island or a peninsula ; the northern part of Europe 
and Asia not being as yet in existence. The eastern limit 
was formed by the Chinese Altai ; the western, by Ararat 
and the Caspian Caucasus. From the east flowed the 
rivers called Oxus and Jaxartes ; from the west, the Tigris 
and Euphrates, — the four rivers of which there is an 
almost universal tradition. 

2. A vast catastrophe by fire and water, which formed the 
Aral and Caspian Seas, involving a great change of climate, 
drove them down from this slope. What had been a delicious 
country, now became cold and unproductive, or arid from 
burning heat. That this convulsion created a great change 
in the distribution of races, the Bible and the Vendidad (one 
of the books of the Zend) show. In that primeval world 
there was already high antiquity and a good deal of civil- 
ization. Now, we have already explained the period we 
have allowed for the development of mankind previous to 



32 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

the Deluge. We have stated that in 1248 a.d. our summer 
gained eight days, and the whole climate of the northern 
hemisphere was in a favorable condition. In a.d. 6498, 
the two seasons will be in equilibrium; and in 11,748 the 
cold season will have gained eight days. If we calculate 
backward, we shall find that at B.C. 4002 the seasons were 
in equilibrium ; that at B.C. 9252 cold weather and unfavor- 
able conditions reigned ; and that the maximum of heat 
had been reached 19,752 b.c. For this reason, the crea- 
tion of man has been assigned to the twentieth century 
before the Christian era ; and the Flood, with its attendant 
catastrophes, to the tenth. 

Here we insert a table of conclusions, which seem needed 
to carry on the story. Before the Deluge, our Scripture 
tells us, Cain emigrated from Eden. He went toward 
the East, and became the father of Turanian civilization. 
Neither the carefully kept books of the Chinese nor the 
Egyptian records show any knowledge of the Flood : con- 
sequently, the races who founded these two civilizations 
emigrated from the primal land before the Flood. The 
Hindoos have long been considered a very ancient race ; but 
this opinion is a mistake : a feud divided them from the main 
body of the Iranians, commonly called Persians, as late as 
6000 B.C. The Zend contains only a record of primeval 
migrations, founding fourteen kingdoms, — the last in the 
Punjaub. The ancestral Aryans left Iran proper, "the land 
of pleasantness," on account of a great convulsion of nature 
near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. This was on 
the slopes of Belur Tagh, between 40^ and 37^ north lati- 
tude, and 89° or 90° east longitude. Two months of sum- 
mer to ten of winter describes the climate which they left. 
The Zend traces the original catastrophe to water, ice, and 
upheaval ; a part of our Scripture traces it to water only : 
but we must not forget the flames which guarded the gates 
of Eden, in the still older story. 



* EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 33 

The original seat of Zoroaster was in Bactria, where he 
ruled after the time of Menes. In the Gathas of Jasma 
his Zend was called the Maga ; but there was a great dif- 
ference between his trinity of "thought, word, and deed," 
and the corrupted Magism. From the Zend we get a 
table like this : — 

B.C. 

Plutonic disturbance and primeval emigration .... 10,000 

Gradual separation into Germans, Sclaves, &c 8,000 

Gradual extension of races, on to 5,000 

Aryan emigration to the Punjaub 4,000 

Zoroaster's religious reform 3?5co 

Sanscrit ceasing to be a living language 1,000 

The two great formative branches of the human family 
show indelible marks of their common origin. The Semi- 
tic and Aryan commenced an independent progression at 
the very moment when Egypt became stationar}^ 

In Babylon the two branches met. There was no root 
in Hebrew or Chaldean, for the Maga, or the Mighty. It 
was the result of Aryan thought working through the Chal- 
dean. Abraham escaped from it by migration. There 
are no common indications between his dialect and the 
language of the Zend. 

From the Vendidad we take the following abbreviated 
record of their movements : — 

1. They went north, to Samarcand, driven by a raging pesti- 
lence ; 

2. To Margiana, where they encountered wars and invading 
Cossacks ; 

3. To Bactria, where they found mosquitoes and poisonous 
plants ; 

4. To Nisaya, in Northern Parthia, where religious scepticism 
assailed them ; 

5. To Herat, where they encountered toil and poverty ; 

6. To Segestan-Dushak, where schism again assailed them ; 

7. To Caboul ; 

8. To Candahar, invaded by the terrible sin of paederasty, or 
unnatural lust ; 



34 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY, - 

9. To Haraquaiti, where an apostacy, concerning the burial 
of the dead, occurred ; 

10. To Hetumat, the classic Etymander, where sorcery pre- 
vailed ; 

11. To Northern Media, where schism began again ; 

12. To Khorassan, where the profane burning of the dead was 
introduced ; 

13. To Verena, or Ghilan, where illness assailed their wo- 
men ; 

14. To the Punjaub, where they finally separated into Persians 
and Hindus ; 

In Irania, Ary meant Lord ; in Egypt, it kept the same signi- 
fication. 

The condition of mankind, before this separation, was 
stereotyped on the Nile. It will be remembered, that the 
Egyptians were the descendants of Kham or Chem, or, 
more popularly. Ham. We shall confine ourselves, as far 
as possible, to the use of the first term. 

From this train of thought, and much evidence, which 
we must pass over until we come to the history of the He- 
brews, we come to the following conclusions : — 

1. The patriarchal dates were true dates, — astronomic, 
historic, or geographic, — partly misunderstood by those 
who recorded them. 

2. We can get at the meaning only by penetrating and 
throwing aside the misconceptions. 

3. The Biblical record consists of two versions, — the 
version of the "Elohim," and the version according to 
Seth. 

4. It begins in a purely ideal statement ; but what follows 
contains reminiscences of thousands of years of primeval 
life. 

5. Hebel, or Abel, the "thing of nought," vanishing 
away, belongs to the ideal sphere. He represents the 
subjugation of the mild shepherd races by the fierce Koss- 
ites, — dwellers in towns, — Turanians descended from 
Cain. 



ECrPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 35 

6. The first epoch in history, therefore, is Turanian, 
represented in Scripture by the migration of Cain, who 
went sullenly out to build cities to the east of Eden. 

7. Then followed what we may call the Middle Age of 
that primeval world. Cain left behind him the develop- 
ment of the races. Eastward went the warriors, westward 
the priests. 

8. Then come the descent and predominance of conquer- 
ing, overbearing Kossite races ; its natural result in de- 
bauchery ; and then the Flood. Great clearness is here 
thrown into the narrative, by putting the story of Nimrod 
into its right place, — before the Flood and the dispersion 
of the Semitic races ; and by showing that Nimrod was no 
Cushite from the South, but a Koshite, or Kossack, a moun- 
taineer, — a conclusion which the books of the Zend justify. 

9. Then came the Flood : of its duration we know noth- 
ing certainly. 

10. Then came the great Semitic emigration, beginning 
with Heber, the man who " crossed the river," the ancestor 
of the Hebrews. This emigration may have originated in 
antediluvian pressure, exerted by Kossite hordes under 
Nimrod. 

11. Almost all nations have some traditions of the Flood, 
which retain a wonderful harmony. That of Abraham 
seems nearest to pure history. 

12. Abraham's roots are Aryan. 

13. The Semites exerted no influence in Egypt, except 
through the invading Hyksos. 

14. The Egyptians, emigrating before the Flood, had no 
knowledge of it. 

15. Vast hordes of Southern Palestinians, driven out of 
Egypt 1,700 B.C., were the real Pelasgi ; in Semitic, Pela- 
sket, or wanderers. They drove the Aryans westward, out 
of the Greek islands. Perhaps the convulsions which 
drove the Phoenicians from the five cities near the Dead 



36 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

Sea to the sea-coast, had prepared the way. These emi- 
grations made the channel through which Asiatic ideas 
were to penetrate the Greek mythology. 

From these conclusions, we have the following approxi- 
mate table of dates : — 

I. Creation of man in Northern Asia .... 20,000 B.C. 
II. Flood and geological disturbance 10,000 ,, 

FIRST AGE. 

Antediluvian history. Formation of languages ajid peoples het%veen the 

Creatioti and the Flood. 

I. Sinism (deposited in China) . . . 20,000 to 15.000 B.C. 
II, Old Turanian (in Tartar}^) . . . 15.000 to 12,000 ,, 
III. Khamism (in Egypt) 12,000 to 11,000 ,, 



SECOXD AGE. 
The Flood. Emigratio7i to Egyft. 
IV. The Formation of Semism, and 

of Nimrod's Turanian kingdom . 10,000 to 7'^5^ ^•^• 

V. Of Iranism in Persia 75^50 to 4,000 ,, 

VI. Chaldeeism in Babylon, and the ein- 

pire of Menes in Egypt .... 0,000 to 3,623 ,, 

THIRD AGE. 

VII. Of Abraham from 2,877 ^^ ^\320 B.C. 

Of Moses from 1,320 to 604 ,, 

In the first age, Sinism was first deposited in North 
China. In its language, every syllable was a word, every 
word a picture. In its worship, the cosmic agencies and 
the souls of ancestors were adored. 

Turanianism deposited itself in Thibet. Its language, 
like that of the South- American tribes, was a pure ag- 
glutination, from which particles soon originated. 

Khamism deposited itself in Egypt. The roots and 
stems of language were formed, and hieroglyphics be- 
gan. 

Then came the Flood ; and, just before it or with it, 
an emigration of Aryans from the regions of the Oxus 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 37 

and Jaxartes, and of Semites from the Euphrates and 
Tigris. 

In the first period of the second age, the Aryans and 
Semites separate still farther in Asia ; the invasion of Nim- 
rod takes place ; a watch-tower is built on the plains of 
Babylon ; and the Aryans move into Bactria. 

In the second period of the second age, the Aryans grad- 
ually separate into Kelts, Armenians, Iranians, Greeks, 
Sclaves, and Germans. The Northern Semites separate 
from the Southern, and a central Aryan civilization begins 
in Asia. The Aryans move to the Indus, the Chaldaeans to 
Babylonia. Zoroaster appears about 3000 B.C. Babylon is 
built by the son of Belus. Abram is born, and moves 
toward Mesopotamia. 

In the third age, not only does Abraham move into 
Canaan, but the convulsion in the neighborhood of the 
Dead Sea drives the inhabitants of the five cities to the 
coast; and Tyrian chronology begins, and, by astronomic 
and other synchronistic points, establishes the era. 

In the first period of the second age, Egypt forms its 
"nomes"or provinces, and the republican power in them 
comes to an end. They have their first priestly king ; and 
then, in the second period, elective kings for 817 years. 
Then "a double government^ and the original worship of the 
sun develops into three forms, — the worship of Seth, of Ra, 
and of Ammon. 

In the third period of the second age, while Babylon is 
building, history begins in Egypt. Menes is on the throne, 
and the whole country under one government. The sys- 
tem of writing changes : the hieroglyphic takes on a cur- 
sive character, and becomes hieratic. Animal worship 
begins, and the largest pyramids are built. 

In the third age, while the descendants of Abraham are 
in Canaan, Sesortosis employs Joseph as his " shalith " in 
Egypt; and, under the pressure of the great famine, the 

6 



38 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

tenure of land is changed throughout Egypt. This put it 
in the power of the kings to oppress their people. It was 
according to poetical justice, that, Joseph having advised 
and consummated this great iniquity, his people, in remote 
centuries, should smart beneath the power it conferred. 

To resume : The first emigration from the Garden is de- 
scribed as moving east; and the emigrants are not shep- 
herds, like Abel, but husbandmen, dwellers in towns. The 
Turanian language shows the first step ; the Khamitic (/.^., 
the Egyptian) , the second. Khamism disappears slowly in 
Asia ; but from the districts about the Euphrates, through 
Mesopotamia and Palestine, a body of people moved, of 
whom we know nothing except their language. This lan- 
guage, rediscovered in the "Book of the Dead," speaks to us 
in syllables that were ancient 4,000 years ago. From this 
language we discover that the emigration took place before 
the Flood, and that, by breaking up old ties of race, it 
opened a new historic consciousness to the emigrants. 
The shortest line from inorganic language to the organic is 
through the Chinese, the Turanian, and the later Semitic. 
But the history of our Iranian languages carries us back to 
the remotest periods. When the Aryans separated, they 
already possessed an orderly system of family life. They 
tended their flocks, practised husbandry, and their language 
teemed with philosophic germs, with suggestions of my- 
thology. The whole grammatical structure, the terms for 
designating all family relations, are common to Bactrians, 
Indians, Greeks, Sclaves, Germans, and Latins. The 
latest of the grand emigrations was probably that of the 
Aryans into the Punjaub. Their oldest hymns date from 
3000 B.C. ; but at that time they had a national existence. 
Between 10,000 and 4000 b.c, a Semitic development was 
attained, separate from the Egj^ptian ; an Iranian, separate 
from the Semitic. That is to say, as the Ar3^an stream 
moved westward, it deposited itself first as Iranian, then as 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 39 

Semitic, then as Egyptian; but the crystallization of this 
deposit into prior forms of* life and government may have 
been in the inverse order. 

The " Ethiops " of the classics lived beyond Syene, where 
the Nubians now live. They did not speak the Egyptian 
language, and were governed by kings controlled by priests, 
— kings who were the tools of that caste. Between the 
Tigris and Euphrates lived peaceable Semites. In Pales- 
tine was a medley of tribes, nomadic and bandit. Egypt 
was the granary of the world, and the caravan trade still 
greater than it is now. The influence of Ethiopia upon her 
in the middle empire was very great. The wife of Amosis, 
the founder of the new empire, was an Ethiopian heiress ; 
and, although nothing would seem more certain than that 
Pharaoh was swallowed up with his hosts, what he really 
did was to flee to Ethiopia, with his son and his gods, in 
the panic of the Exodus. The civilizing power came into 
Egypt from Asia. It went first to Upper Egypt, and thence 
descended to the Delta. The first emperors were Thinites, 
who came from Abydos to found Memphis. Theban kings 
were on the throne at the close of the old empire, and dur- 
ing the whole of the middle empire, or Hyksos usurpation. 
They form the most brilliant element of the new empire 
which came after ; and we find it reflected in the poems of 
Homer. Memphis was the focus of the old empire. From 
the twenty-first dynasty, it was the cradle of royal races. 
The nations of the old world turned towards the Mediterra- 
nean, as plants turn towards the light. Alexandria and the 
great cities of the Delta began to draw vitality from Asia ; 
and Upper Egypt sank into the shade. Egypt was always 
the child of both Asia and Africa. In Ethiopia, the priest 
had the upper hand ; in Egypt, the warrior. The king 
whom the Thebans once chose on the Libyan mountain, as 
Synesius tells, must have been a priest. 

All this was over when Menes came to the throne. 



40 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

Sacerdotal government was the ultimatum of Ethiopia. In 
Egypt, it was only transitional. Only a generation after 
Joseph made over to the crown the whole fee simple of the 
country, we find a second Sesortosis building the Labyrinth. 
When Strabo says that the representatives of each nome, 
or province, assembled there, at the great festival of the 
Panegyrics, he transmits its history. At Thebes, every 
vestige of the early freedom was now destroyed. The in- 
dependence of the nomes was lost in the gigantic building, 
the monster of imperial power, that devoured freedom. 

The following tables will give a bird's-eye view of the 
development of Egj^pt : — 

PRIOR TO MENES. 

I. Rule of sacerdotal kiags^iiLthe Thebaid, Bytis. 
II. Elected kings in the Thebaid. Last Ethiopic constitution. 

III. Hereditary princes. Confederation in two groups. Asi- 

atic influence prevaiHng. 

IV. Double empire. National civilization. 

V. Predominance of Lower-Egypt and Asiatic ideas. 

FROM MENES TO THE LOSS OF INDEPENDENCE. 

I. Unity of empire under the first dynasty. 
II. Decline of the Thinite line, re-action towards Ethiopia, 
worship of animals becoming national, under the 2d, 
3d, and 4th dynasties. 

III. Separation. The 5th (Theban) dynasty gives way to the 

6th (Memphite). 

IV. Separation into two governments. Conquered Memphites 

disappear in the 8th dynasty. The North revolts. At 
Pelusium, a way is opened for Asia to prevail, when 
the Sesostridee at Thebes become extinct. 
V. The power of the Pharaohs becomes restricted to the The- 
baid. They form marriage connections in Ethiopia. 
In dynasties 13, 14, and 17, the Ethiopian element be- 
comes fixed. 
VI. The Thebans restore the empire. Theban kings reign 
down to the 20th dynasty. 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 41 

VII. A Re-action. The Thebans die out. Princely houses of 
the Delta, especially the Saite, furnish the kings for the 
2ist and the 26th dynasty. 
VIII. The Ethiopians dethrone Bochoris the Reformer, and 
reign fifty years as the 25th dynasty. 
IX. Supremacy of the Asiatic element shows itself throughout 
the reign of Psammetichus of vSais. Egypt is in friendly 
relations with Greece. Its great bodies of feudal sol- 
diery are breaking up. 
X. It is subjugated by Persia, and later by Macedonia. 

At the risk of seeming repetition, we must give one more 
tabular view, to indicate the position of Egypt as regards 
the development of civilization and government. The last 
table showed what races swayed her, what divisions of 
races occurred within her own limits. We divide the story 
now into five epochs, indicated in outline below. Our 
object is to show, that a very much longer period of time 
was needed for her development than has been hitherto 
accorded. 

JFirst Efoch^ 1,500 years. — Egypt's primeval time; the 
formation of language ; the development of the Khamitic 
character, language, and picture-writing. Latest point, 
9500 B.C. 

Second Efoch^ 2,000 years. — Transition period; forma- 
tion of mythology ; age of Egyptian idiographic charac- 
ters, up to syllableism ; development of the worship of 
Osiris. Latest point, 8000 B.C. 

Third Epoch, 1,100 years. — Political commencement; 
formation of the nomes ; constitution of districts ; formation 
of a S3^stem of phonetics ; hieroglyphs, with syllables up 
to the alphabet. Latest point, 7000 B.C. 

Fourth Epoch, 1,500 years. — Double government, Up- 
per and Lower Egypt ; formation of a constitution and an 
alphabet. Latest point, 5500 B.C. 

Fifth Epoch, — This begins with the reign of Menes, in 



42 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 

historic order, at 3400 B.C., which gives us a chronology 
like this : — 

Kham ism, forming into a nation 1,500 years. 

Osirism and picture-writing developing .... 1,500 ,, 

Formation of the nomes 1,500 ,, 

Consolidation of Upper and Lower Egypt . . . 1,500 ,, 

Both united in religion under Menes 3?4oo B.C. 

Which carries history back to 9,400 B.C. 

This gives us 6,000 years before Menes. It can be 
proved, that, at his accession, language, manners, and 
religion had already become rigid. There were, before 
his time, we are told, 180 generations, which gives us 
5,400 years; and we must throw the emigration back of 
the Flood, of which it preserved no tradition. That this is 
not an extravagant estimate, we shall see ; for Manetho 
gives 5,212 human princes before Menes. If we throw 
out the usual proportion of contemporaneous kings, still 
this period is not too long. 

We shall indicate in what manner, in Bunsen's view, 
the existence and antiquity of all other Asiatic nations 
are involved in that of Egypt. It has been impossible 
to pause to prove the positions taken. The proof is 
found in following the two subordinate branches of the 
main inquiry, — the Hebrew chronology, and the history 
of the Egyptian literature and monuments, in which we 
have found the chief interest of these volumes. The 
scheme of the 21,000-years' cycle is illustrated by careful 
plates, drawn, in accordance with ancient and modern 
observation, under the direction of a skilful astronomer. 
The Sothiac festive year, it will be readily acknowledged, 
was of such importance, that its celebration would always 
be remembered in connection with the king reigning at the 
time of its celebration. If we celebrated the fourth of July 
only once in a hundred years, of course the President in 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 43 

office at the time would become prominent. There must 
be 1,461 years between any two reigns in which such an 
event occurred : so we have a regulator for the internal 
chronology. A careless reader might find no proof of the 
assertion, that Nimrod was a Kossite [Koshite or Kossack], 
or mountaineer of the Caucasus. The proof is mixed in 
with the philological investigations, and is to be found in 
the enumerations of the Zend. 

The reader who has attempted Bunsen, and given up its 
perusal in despair, may doubt the fairness of any exposition 
of his work which seems to run smoothly. It seems proper, 
then, to indicate in what manner our statement has been 
prepared. It is based upon the conclusions of the first four 
volumes of " Egypt's Place in History," carefully studied 
out and compared. Whatever changes are suggested (if 
any) in the fifth volume are to be further treated by them- 
selves ; for that part of it which does not consist of Egyp- 
tian remains is merel}^ a summing-up of results. In this 
reduction, we have thrown out all technical learning not 
essential to the reader's comprehension of the subject. 
Learning, necessary to Bunsen's own preparation for his 
work, is frequently bewildering to the student, who looks 
chiefly for results. We have also suppressed all variations 
in the spelling, which grow out of philological habits. 
Common readers are puzzled when Ham suddenly becomes 
Chem ; or Iranian, Aryan. As Bunsen's work was gradual, 
and his inquiry progressive, dates are assumed in his first 
volume, which are slightly changed in the fourth. He has 
a way, too, of mentioning dates, sometimes in a specific 
and sometimes in an approximate way, which is puzzling. 
Thus he sometimes speaks of the culmination of favorable 
influences, in the thirteenth century of our era, as having 
occurred in 1240, sometimes as in 1248. Such variations 
as arise from the development of his work have a real 
value in the book itself, because they show when and how 



44 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIST OR T. 

his conclusions are affected ; but they have no such value 
to the general reader. They only confuse him with their 
uncertainty. We adhere, therefore, to the specific dates. 

It is not likely that we have been able to assume these 
changes without making some mistakes ; but better incur 
the blame of that, than permit this magnificent work to be 
wholly obscured and hidden by inconsistencies so trivial. 

We take little note, so far, of the new conclusions in Bun- 
sen's fifth and last volume. In the first place, the five 
months which have elapsed since the publication are not 
time sufficient for the profound study which his book re- 
quires ; in the second, we fail to see the force of the rea- 
soning which induced him at the last to yield to the old 
Alexandrian chronology, — to yield, too, when every thing 
seemed to favor his more extended scheme. It is a very 
delicate and true scholarship which is fitted to deal with 
this question and the new conclusion which forces the 
whole history of Egypt into a period five hundred years 
later, and presses, as it seems to us, several things out of 
fit place. But we will conclude these notes by some ex- 
tracts from this volume, of a kind suited to the student who 
means to study it in earnest. 

The Epilogue is divided, problems and key into four 
parts, each consisting of nine principal heads': — 

I. Results as to chronological problems exclusively 
Egyptian. 

II. Chronological results connected with synchronisms, 
— Biblical, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Greek. 

III. Results connected with the reconstruction of the 
ancient ante-chronological but epochal history of Egypt. 

IV. Corollaries, philosophical and practical. 

The synchronisms are the test of the Egyptian dates ; 
the concordance of Egypt and Asia is the test of the position 
assigned to the Egyptian language and religion. Finally, 
the bearing of the historical conclusions upon the recon- 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 45 

structlon of universal- history is the test of the value of the 
research. 

The date established for the New Empire from Amos to 
Nectanebo II., 1,294 years, is essentially the date of Mane- 
tho, and is sufficiently tested, being supported by two abso- 
lute dates. These last are found to be historical, by the 
check of the monuments. It was anciently reported that 
Manetho's dates depended on the Sothiac C3^cle. His 
dates were not arranged in epochs of 1,460 years ; but it is 
impossible to assign any reason for his closing his first and 
second books with the nth and 19th Dynasties, except an 
attempt to conform them to the close of the cycle, in the 
intercalary, or 1461st year. In Menepthah's case the fol- 
lowing cycle took his name, as, in all the known eras of 
Europe and Asia, cycles have taken the name of the mon- 
archs in whose reign they began. 

All the accounts of Greek historians and chronographers, 
before Manetho, are based on the Egyptian folly of regnal 
years. As Manetho raised the chronology of the Old and 
Middle Empires, Eratosthenes and Apollodorus reduced it. 
The chronological series of the Old Empire from Menes to 
Amuntimaios, officially examined by Eratosthenes, corrects 
Manetho as to the Old Empire. It solves all the problems 
of the first six Dynasties and their equivalents on the tablets 
of Karnak and Abydos. Eratosthenes and Apollodorus 
combined give the key to the fundamental error, and, by a 
second absolute date, confirm Bunsen's chronology. 

Of the Alexandrian chronology, he says, — 

"It is, in the first place, the highest authority. It is of 
one piece, without heterogeneous elements, and with no 
gap to fill up. It comes nearest to the Bible dates. Its 
lists bear a constant analogy to Manetho." 

The 215 years of bondage in Egypt form an historical 
date, according to an official inscription of Tuthmosis III. 
himself. This Tuthmosis was tl\e fighter who made Nine- 

7 



46 EGYPT- S PLACE IX HISTORY. 

veil pay tribute, began the oppression, and. not content ^vith 
his own glory, erased his sisters escutcheons. Hence the 
following important table : — 

B.C. 

The first year of Tuthmosis III., an ahsohite date . . . 1574 
Time ^vhen the Hyksos finally evacuated Eg}"pt .... 154S 
Twelve years in Asia, and Mesopotamia conquered from 

154^ to 1534 
The Exodus in the fifth year of Menepthah 1320 

The bondacre beo^an under Tuthmosis III., in the vear 
before his last campaign, 1535 B.C. It is chiefly associated, 
however, with the memory of his successor, ^lenepthah. 

The journey of Abraham into Egypt occurred toward 
the close of the 21st century B.C., when the Nantefs ruled. 
AVe have papyri of that era which prove an advanced civil- 
ization. The great pyramids had been built for many 
centuries; so had the temple of Ptah, the sanctuary at 
Memphis. Abraham saw the rich corn-fields, which have 
in all ages supplied the wants of Kanaan. 

As all Egyptologists are not, like Bunsen, general his- 
torians, and most historians are ignorant of Egyptology, 
there exists great ignorance of the nature of Hyksos sway 
in Egypt. What Manetho states, the monuments confirm. 
The Shepherds were military' nomads, who left Egyptian 
life quite undisturbed. They never occupied Upper Egypt ; 
but, driving back the native princes, took tribute from 
them. The fort}' years, bet^veen the Exodus and the pass- 
age of the Jordan, are checked and confirmed by an 
Assvrian and Egvptian date. Happy are those persons, 
but not to be envied, who have no misgivings about making 
Moses march out with more than two millions of people, at 
the end of a popular conspiracy and rising, in the sunny 
days of the i8th Dynast}' ; who make the Israelites con- 
quer Kanaan under Joshua, during, and just previously to, 
the most formidable campaigns of conquering Pharaohs in 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 47 

that same country : The Exodus could have taken place 
only under Menepthah ; and Joshua could not have crossed 
the Jordan before Easter, 1280 B.C., — the last campaign of 
Raamses III. having been in 1281 ; and, at this time, the 
Jewish Commonwealth must have been already in a state 
of dissolution under Semiramis, who is no myth, but a per- 
fectly historical personage. The Assyrian dates, found for 
her, tally with the Egyptian for the 20th Dynasty. Assyria 
was created by the power of the Ninyads, between 1250 
and 1120. 

Before Moses, that is before 3500 B.C., there were four 
epochs : — 

L Epoch of hereditary princes ; those of Abydos being 
prominent. 

II. Epoch of elective princes in the nomes ; the elect- 
ors being the priests and nobles. 

III. Epoch of sacerdotal kings. The electors the same ; 
the democratic element — i,e.^ the trades — not yet divided 
into castes. 

IV. Epoch of municipal institutions, with established 
worship, and a common language in the nomes. 

The civilizing element in Egypt seems to have been 
Osirism, which had its root in Asia. The leading myth of 
the dying and reviving divinity — symbol of the God- 
consciousness of the human soul, itself symbolized by the 
solar year — is not only Asiatic, but so is the etymology of 
the names, " Isis," "Osiris," "Set." Every thing points to 
Phoenicia, and from Phoenicia back to Chaldea. The 
Egyptian language contains deposited germs, which have 
since developed, sometimes as Semitic, sometimes as Aryan. 
We find the same roots and stems in the oldest Turanian 
forms, and these again presuppose a purely substantial lan- 
guage. We should be obliged to assume such a language, 
did we not find it in the ancient Chinese. 

There are various proofs of the antiquity of the sacred 



48 EGl'PT'S PLACE IX HIS TORT. 

literature of Egypt. The text of the Papyrus of Turin, 
published by Lepsius, seems to belong to the eighteenth or 
nineteenth century. In his introduction to the "Book of the 
Dead," Dr. Birch mentions, as a proof of antiquity, the 
text of chap. 54 engraved on the statue which the old 
oppressor, Tuthmosis III., erected to his nurse ; and the as- 
tounding fact, that chap. 17 is inscribed on the coffin of 
a queen of the nth dynasty! 2800 B.C. 

Four thousand five hundred vears old, at the least, the 
text agrees entirely with the printed Turin Papyrus. 

This seventeenth chapter consists of prayers, addressed 
to Osiris, the Western Sun, symbol of the uncreated Cause. 
The glosses on the ancient text prove that it was then nearly 
unintelligible to the scribes ! Here is the hymn of Osiris, 
Son of God : — 

" I am the sun in its setting, the only Being in the Firma- 
ment. 

I am the risin^ sun. 

The sun's power begins when he is set (/.^., the soul's). 

I am the great God, begotten bv himself; I can never be stopped 
bv the elementar\^ powers ; I am the morning (/.^., resurrection). 
I know the gate (/.^.. of death). The Father of the Spirit, the 
eternal Soul of the Sun, has examined him and proved him : he 
has found that the departed fought, on earth, the battle of the Good 
Gods, as his father, the Lord of Invisible Worlds, had ordered 
him to do. 

I know the Great God, who is invisible. 

I am that Phoenix in HeUopohs, always rising again. 

I am God, the Creator." 

The orio-in of these hvmns is before Menes, and thev 
show the connecti(m of ancestral worship with the worship 
of the Gods ; for, in the chamber of Tuthmosis, the oppres- 
sor, the first of the kinij's sixtv ancestors is Ra, or Helios 
himself. 

The Conventional Epoch, of about 4000 e.g., as the 
beginning of human existence, happens to be, with ap- 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 49 

proximate accuracy, the starting-point of chronological 
history : — 

B.C. 

The era of Babylonian empire is 37^4 

The era of Menes (Alexandrian ?) 3^59 

The Exodus occurred 1320 

The first Olympian year of Rome, and Nabonassar 

at Babylon is 77^~^^4 

Time of Isaiah 74° 

Jeremiah, Greek philosophy, and Solon, flourished . 600 

Buddha, Confucius, and Laotsi, about 550 

Rome was a republic 500 

Socrates lived . 400 

To return from the general survey, the monuments 2800 
B.C. are full of ritualistic formulas. To feed the hungry, 
give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked and bury the 
dead, to serve the king loyally, were the first duties of the 
pious man. Joseph found these commands and the immor- 
tality of the soul cut into the pyramids, when he went into 

Egypt. 

In reference to papyri. Dr. Birch says : — 

" Rituals are as trustworthy as the best classical manuscripts 
of the Middle Ages. Like other objects of the funeral equip- 
ments, ready-made papyri were always on sale, blank spaces be- 
ing left for the name of the purchaser, inserted in another hand. 
In many hieratic papyri, the whole was prepared to order, as the 
execution shows. Owing to ignorance or carelessness, the titles, 
vignettes, or rubrics were often omitted." 

The books are expressly stated to have been written by 
"the finger of the Great God."* The principal ideas con- 
nected with the ritual are the living after death, the being 
"born again like the Sun," and the wiping out of "all cor- 
ruption from the heart." 

* An explanation of the expression in our Scripture, "with reference to 
the tables of stone ; that is, they are of as divine authority as the law in 
Egypt. — C. H. D. 



50 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIST OR T. 

The mystery of names, the knowledge of which was a 
sovereign virtue, appears to have existed, not only in 
Egypt, but elsewhere. Traces of it are found in the Cab- 
bala, the spurious Gospels, and early Roman history, in 
which the secret name of the city was one of the fatal 
things. The eleventh chapter of the " Book of the Dead " 
has also some connection with masonic ordinances, in 
which the mystical names of the various parts of the door- 
way are actually found in the Egyptian formulae, so far as 
can be gathered from the hints on subjects so removed from 
popular knowledge. 

Considered as a whole, this ritual is the most important 
of the texts, as regards the variety of information that it 
gives. The Deities referred to are either Solar or Infernal. 
Like all Oriental writings, its mysteries are conveyed in 
allegorical language, the principal persons being alluded to 
by epithets or qualifications. The style is concise, and 
straightforward, and for the most part without any metrical 
flow. 

From its pages w^e copy one or two things that strike us 
as we turn them over : — 

" I am Yesterday, the Morning, the Light at its birth the sec- 
ond time, the jSIystery of the Soul, made by the gods." 

" I am the Inundator. Great Listener is thy name." (The 
words also stand for the Nile and Egypt.) 

" I am the Lord of Life. I have come forth from the great 
gate. I have rejoined the eye." 

" He does all that he chooses, like the gods there, in garments 
of truth, for ever" (or " millions of times").* 

" He will go to the gods who belong to the Sun, for he has 
stood at the boat of the Sun in the course of every day." — 
"When this is done, his Soul lives for ever; he does not die 
again in Hades. He is not annihilated when words are weighed. 
His word is good against his enemies ; his food is off the table of 
the Sun." 

* See a similar use of numbers in our Scripture. — C. H. D. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 51 

Osiris is as well spoken {i,e., speaks as well?) on earth as 
in Hades. Humanity is so essential, that there are twenty- 
one " Gates of the Meek-hearted " ! The name of one 
doorkeeper is "Upsetter of Forms." Greatly must it have 
rejoiced the heart of the ancient Egyptian to know it. The 
name of another was "Stopper of the Verbose." Bores, 
then, were of ancient institution ! Many passages recall to 
us formulas in the Psalms of David. 

In the inscriptions, the scribe Mentusa says, "I never 
repeated an evil word." Long be his name remembered ! 
Another says, " I injured no child ; I oppressed no widow. 
There was no beggar in my days : I made the widow like 
the woman with an husband." The text of Raamses II., 
about the Hebrews, says, " I have heard the message which 
my Lord sent, saying. Give corn to the men and soldiers 
and Hebrews, who are drawing the stone to fortify the place 
of Raamses, the living, delivered to the general of militia, 
Ameneman. I have given them corn every month, accord- 
ing to the instruction of my Lord." Afiuruiu is the word 
for Hebrews. 

In examining the great work of Lepsius, one is struck by 
great resemblances to remains in Central Asia. The gold 
crosses on the priest's dresses identify the caste. A lion sits 
beside the king, whose throne-name shows that he is only a 
vicegerent. P. H. Ra, is Pharaoh, or the Sun. A Hawk is 
a prophecy of the Phoenix ; and the Sun itself indicates the 
royal banners. The Princes fanned the King, or carried 
his palanquin : a peculiar lock of hair, uncut, also indicates 
their subordinate position. To the sacred architecture and 
painting, perspective was forbidden ; reminding one of the 
Mosaic formula, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any like- 
ness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth 
beneath," &c. Idols are seen, filled with barley, which of 
course their priests consumed. At the feet of the king, the 
tongues, ears, and phalli of the conquered peoples are piled 



62 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 

up. Glue is used in every age. The sandstone walls, 
coated with lime to color, are carefully protected from the 
rain, a deep groove (V) is cut where the stones of the roof 
unite ; and a wider stone is fitted carefully in, with broad, 
projecting eaves. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 53 



PART II. 



EGYPTIAN HISTORY, AS A FRAMEWORK TO HEBREW 

CHRONOLOGY. 

T TAVING shown the shallowness of Bunsen's critics, 
the character of his own preparation and life, and 
given a general view of the place Egypt filled in history, 
according to his investigations, we now propose to show, in 
detail, the internal history of Egypt, and the manner in 
which the Hebrew chronology depends upon, and illus- 
trates it. We condense as far as the desire to be intelligi- 
ble will permit, and refer students of -proof in detail to the 
volumes themselves. 

The first recorded king of Egypt was Menes ; and, from 
his time to that of Alexander, the history of Egypt is di- 
vided into three periods : — 

1. The 0/rt? jS'/;^^/;'^, beginning with Menes . . . . 3643 B.C. 
and lasting 1 ,076 years, to the end of the Thirteenth 

Dynasty. 

2. The Middle Ejnpire^ beginning with the Four- 

teenth Dynasty 2567 B.C. 

and lasting 928 3^ears. Convulsed by Hyksos' 
disturbance, and ending with the Seventeenth 
Dynasty. 

3. The New Empire^ which began with the vigorous 

Eighteenth Dynasty 1626 B.C. 

and was an attempt to revive the fortunes of Egypt 
under the families of Raamses and Amosis. 

In the Old Empire, the names of Menes, Sesostris, 
Amenema, and Mencheres are prominent. In the Middle 
Empire^ we find usurpers, none of whom were important. 
In the JSfew E?npire, we have various sovereigns of the 

8 



54 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

house of Raamses, confounded frequently with the Sesorto- 
sidag, of the Old Empire, in common tradition. 

We had hoped to proceed to the Hebrew chronology, 
connected with the discussion of our subject, without sJiow- 
ing, in greater detail, the vicissitudes of the Egyptian 
throne ; but this proves to be impossible. The theories of 
Bunsen, sustained we think by monumental evidence, are 
wholly diiferent from those of Brugsch, discussed lately in 
the book notices of the "Examiner." According to Bun- 
sen, a much longer period than five hundred years is ne- 
cessary to account for the growth of the Hebrew nation ; 
and the Semitic kings left no more traces of themselves 
upon the monuments of Egypt, than upon the desert sands 
their invading feet had crossed. We remind our readers, 
then, that Thirty Dynasties complete the historic record of 
Egypt, and that for these thirty Bunsen is able to account ; 
but they are not put upon record in their numerical order, 
that order consisting of the mistaken inferences of old writers. 
The monuments prove that they did not succeed each other, 
but were often cotemporaneous ; and that, in times of inter- 
necine war, the old lists frequently put the struggling princes 
into the line of descent, as if they were father and son, in- 
stead of lord and rebel. To give some idea of the succes- 
sion of princes must, then, be our first work, — the greatest 
difficulty encountered in the work of restoration appertain- 
ing, of course, to the Old Emjbire. 

The Fi7'st Dynasty was Thinite, and consisted of five 
kings. This era Bunsen places between 4000 and 2800 
B.C. ; and it would seem, from recent decisions in reference 
to the age of the Great Pyramid, as if the older date were 
most likely to be true. 

Menes, the first king, reigned over both countries, 3643 
B.C., and found a matured civilization. He regulated the 
course of the Nile, improved its western arm, and drained 
the nome of Memphis so that the city of that name could 



".:3< '^ 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 55 

be built. His influence was religious and distinct. The 
succeeding kings made themselves famous in medicine and 
mathematics. Physicians still use the Egyptian signs for 
drachms and grains, and mark their recipes with the 
sacred sign of a planet in its contracted form. 
Our numerals also are Egyptian, to which L 
dia added the cipher. The last king of this dynasty Bun- 
sen marks as a " Heraclide," perhaps the progenitor of the 
Greek family. The pyramids of Kokomi were also built. 
Then, perhaps because of a royal marriage, the line di- 
vides, and — 

The Second Dynasty and the Third are on two thrones, at 
This and Memphis, 3453 b.c. Here the lists bear an interest- 
ing testimony in reference to the age and size of man : for the 
first king of the second dynasty is mentioned as a giant, 
eight feet nine inches tall, who built the pyramids at Ghi- 
zeh ; and the generations averaged, six thousand years ago, 
exactly as they do to-day. In these dynasties, females were 
admitted to the throne, — a fruitful source of confusion after- 
ward. To this was soon added another, — the spiteful habit 
of erasing the escutcheons of preceding kings, after family 
divisions or civil wars. In the second and third dynasties, 
animal worship took the place of a cosmical and astral 
faith, waiting became cursive, a system of castes began, 
and the brick pyramids at Dashoor and Abouseer were built. 
Then, too, the Nile ran honey for eleven days. 

Under the Fourth Dynasty^ the empire was united again 
for 155 3^ears (3229 B.C.). It began with the Cheops of 
Herodotus, the. builder of the Great Pyramid. Compulsory 
labor began ; but Mencheres, the holy, abolished it, and 
restored the old and purer religion. 

Then came cotemporaneously the Fifth and Sixth Dy- 
nasties^ — the fifth consisting of one man, a usurper, Othoes, 
who founded the tormenting and confusing line of Heracle- 
apolitan kings, and was killed by his own guards. 



56 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY, 

The Sixth Dynasty opened with the wonderful reign of 
Phiops Apappus, 3074 b.c. He was crowned at six years 
of age, and reigned a hundred years, — as great a wonder 
then as it would be now. His son, and after that his 
son's widow, Nitocris, reigned with this old man. She put 
her husband's murderer to death; and with her, 5,000 
years ago, the pretty story of Cinderella originated. She 
had been a slave ; and one day, while she was bathing, the 
\^'ind carried her slipper to the king, who would not rest till 
he had found her. With the grandchildren of old Phiops 
came a confused period. 

The Seventh^ Eighth^ JVinth^ Tenths and Eleventh Dy- 
nasties were then upon the throne together, 2915 b.c. The 
race of Phiops continued on the throne at Memphis as the 
seventh and eighth. The eleventh, composed of a Theban 
family, — the Nantefs, — reigned at Thebes ; and the ninth 
and tenth were in the Delta, near Pelusium. Here the 
glory of Memphis ends. The Theban family of Nantefs, 
whose monuments, coffins, gilded bodies, and votive tablets 
still exist to tell the story, comes up again in the twelfth 
dvnast}^ with the Sesostridse. Arabs ravaged the grand 
old cit}' ; and the native princes, who kept their thrones, 
began to pay the Hj^ksos tribute. 

With this Twelfth Dynasty the glory of the Old Empire 
rose to its height. The first Sesostris, 2754 ^.c, created the 
fertile nome of the Favoum, bv fillino; a rockv basin with 
Nile mud ; its magnificent drains, dams, and gates still 
challenging the brains of the archaeologist. He conquered 
all the land, from Cush to the copper mines of Sinai. His 
tombs have Doric columns. His statue is now at Berlin. 
In the reign of his son, Sesostris H., we find fine colored 
sculpture, chess-plaj'ing, and glass-blowing. Sesostris HI. 
made canals, built forts, and conquered Europe to Thrace. 
Mares, his son (?), built the Labyrinth, in which the prov- 
inces were afterwards convened, and Lake Moeris. Under 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 67 

Sesostris I., the second king of this family, Joseph went 
down into Egypt, and Jacob emigrated. In his " Bible 
Work," Bunsen fixes this date at 2747 b.c, which gives 
nearly 1,400 years for the development of the Hebrew 
nation. The monuments show that it was no uncommon 
thing for such immigrations to take place. Driven by 
famine, war, or local distresses, bands of Arabs came 
down, were received, and devoted themselves to the care 
of the king's flocks. Such communities, doubtless, swelled 
the " mixed multitude" of the Exodus. The Scripture indi- 
cates very distinctly that the king whom Joseph knew was 
no Bedawin or Hyksite. An inscription in Upper Egypt 
records the terrible famine which the Hebrew viceroy re- 
lieved ; and connected with the reign of this Sesostris was 
that change in the tenure of the soil which added to the 
oppressions of the people, and is recorded in Gen. xlvii. 
20-26. It would seem, then, that we have here a fixed 
synchronistic point; and there can be no dispute, except 
about the length of the interval between this king and the 
Menepthah of the Exodus. The wise reign of Sesostris, 
intended to avert national ruin, was followed by a period of 
victory and prosperity. Sesostris found the empire under 
the control of three or four Dynasties. The kings in the 
Delta had once grasped imperial power. When the building 
of the splendid monuments at Syene was followed by the 
grand erection of the Labyrinth, and the more useful crea- 
tion of Lake Moeris, then popular hatred rose to its height. 
The kings in the Delta hated the Labyrinth, — a perpet- 
ual reminder of their own inferiority, because intended to 
accommodate the princes who came up to pay tribute, -— 
and helped to destroy it. They made use of religious dif- 
ferences to create discontent, — an easy task where one 
province worshipped the crocodile, and another the ichneu- 
mon, its natural destroyer. The treachery of the Delta 
brought in the invading Hyksos without a blow. 



58 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

From the Twelfth to the Seventeenth Dynasty^ desolation 
and confusion reigned. Native monuments — among others, 
the tablet of the dead at Gurnah — represent the native 
kings as tributary to the Hyksos down to the time of the 
eighteenth dynasty ; but the Arab has not perpetuated here 
the memory of his usurpation : Ave find it only in the remote 
legends of his wandering race. In Arabia, they say, the 
Shepherds ruled eight hundred years in Egypt. The proof 
of Manetho's Hyksos chronology lies in the evidence, that 
upon no other assumption can the second Sothiac cycle fall 
in the eleventh dynasty. All scholars admit that the third 
fell in the nineteenth. 

The Eighteenth Dynasty of Theban kings makes us famil- 
iar with the names of Amosis, Tuthmosis, and Amenophis. 
It opens with tlie reign of the wonderful Amos, who drove 
out the Shepherds, and had a lovely Ethiop wife, whose 
name meant " fair and blameless," in accordance with the 
old Homeric suggestion. A very striking portrait of her 
was once shown by Professor Lesly, at the Lowell Insti- 
tute. From her time, no honor could be conferred on an 
Egyptian woman so great as the being perniitted to bear her 
name. A daughter of Amos and this Aahmes-Nefruari 
built Cleopatra's Needle ; but one of her brothers afterward 
enviously erased her escutcheons. Three of her brothers 
built at Karnak and Tetmes. The statue called Memnon 
by the Greeks was really a statue erected, in this glorious 
Eighteenth Dynasty, to the great conqueror, Tuthmosis III., 
a son of Amos and the beautiful Nefruari. It was erected 
by his own grandson, and the mistake grew out of the 
misapprehension of the Egyptian word for "monument," — 
mem-nen. The young Amenophis, who created the mem- 
nen, was a heretic, worshipping the visible disc of the sun. 
He built the palace of Luxor. 

His grandtather, Tuthmosis III., had a history which may 
be thus summed up : — 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY, 59 

He forced the Shepherds to evacuate Suez in . . . . 154S B.C. 
Made a campaign, and was victorious over Nineveh and 

Babylon, in ^54^ '» 

Employed the Jews in building, so that the period of 

oppression may be said to have begun in ... . i534 " 

Might he not have been content to leave untouched the es- 
cutcheons of his sister, Mespres, w^hich he enviously de- 
stroyed? 

The Nineteenth Dynasty teems with warlike expeditions 
into Barbary and Crete, and magnificent erections of tem- 
ples, obelisks, and fortresses. Its six kings, beginning to 
reign about 1450 b.c, all bear familiar names. They are 
called Sethos or Raamses, with one exception, — the fanatic 
of the Exodus, whose name was Menepthah. The heresy of 
the young Amenophis spread. The whole country was in 
confusion. Raamses IL, who reigned from 1391 to 1325 B.C., 
— a date positively ascertained, — w^as the first consistent 
oppressor of the Jews. There is a signet-ring of his, which 
the child Moses may have played with. His portrait is 
now at Memphis. There was some ground for the popular 
hatred of the Jews, and the royal abuse of them. The 
people could remember a time before Joseph, when they 
had land of their own. The king, a fanatic, trying to 
make amends for heresies, believed that their presence in 
the country offended the gods. Menepthah followed Raam- 
ses n. ; and in his reign occurred the Exodus. The 
remains of this period, in an artistic point of view, are 
extremely beautiful. The most finished papyri in the 
world Moses might have carried, and possibly did carry, 
beyond Jordan. Menepthah was a weak fanatic. The 
hatred of the people for Raamses, who had overtasked 
Egyptians as well as Jews, was so great, that his son could 
never finish his tomb. Menepthah yielded, Manetho tells 
us, to a ^"revolt of lepers." Not so fortunate as to be 
drow^ned in the Red Sea, which swallowed up his host, he 



60 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

fled to Ethiopia, with his heir and his sacred bull, and re- 
mained there until his son was old enough to recover the 
kingdom. When Moses went out of Egypt, there were two 
claimants of the throne, beside Menepthah, — Sipthah and 
Amen-Messu. Does not this give some meaning to the 
king's fear, that, if the Jews stayed, they might unite with 
his enemies? Sipthah was married, in infancy, to Tauser, 
the sister of Menepthah, and daughter of Raamses the op- 
pressor. One of Sipthah's inscriptions is a prayer, beseech- 
ing Heaven for children to inherit the throne. Was Tauser 
the princess who, despairing of issue by her boy-husband, 
begged of the stern old Raamses the lovely babe she found 
in the bulrushes? The character of the times makes it easy 
to see what position Moses might have held in that court, and 
recalls the appeal of Satan in the temptation, "All these 
things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down, and worship 
me :" one of the many analogies discoverable in the lives ot 
Moses and Jesus. 

The Twentieth Dynasty^ still Theban, opens with the 
name of a mean fellow, named Marres Phruores, whose pre- 
cise relationship to Menepthah is not clear. He found noth- 
ing better to do than to put his own throne-mark on older 
monuments, and suggest to the Greeks the god Proteus. 
His son was Raamses III., a magnificent conqueror, whose 
splendid tomb contains a painted sea-fight. His beautiful 
red granite coflSn is at Paris ; its lid at Cambridge, England. 
It was in the fourteenth year of this king, that Joshua crossed 
the Jordan. His conquests in Palestine had compelled 
the Jews to refrain from entering Canaan up to that time. 
He was succeeded by ten kings, who all bore the name of 
Raamses. The eighth of these was the last who carried the 
god Set on his escutcheon. With the extinction of the 
Ramessidse, a great revolution occurred. 

The Twenty-First Dyriasty^ containing seven kings, con- 
sisted of a priestly caste who had at last got the better of 
the struggling heretics. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT, 61 

Nine Bubastite kings constitute the Twenty-Second Dy- 
nasty. The first of these was Shishak. In the front court 
at Karnak is the sculpture which shows how he trec^Led 
Rehoboam at Jerusalem, — the "Bible Work" isays in 
968 B.C. 

In the Twenty-Third Tanite Dynasty^ we have four 
strange kings. 

In the Twenty-Foiu'th Dynasty^ one Saite, in whose 
reign (Bocchoris's) "a lamb spoke." The people received 
from him peace and a constitutional government. 

In the Tzventy-Fifth Dynasty^ three Ethiops reigned. 

In the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty^ we have nine Saite kings, 
two of them known to us in the Scripture. The fifth of 
them, Necho II., defeated Josiah at Megiddo, and took 
Jerusalem, 607 b.c. Two years after, he was defeated in 
his turn by Nebuchadnezzar. The next but one who suc- 
ceeded him was -the Hofra of Scripture, properly Uaphres. 

The Twenty- Seventh Dynasty records the Persian rule 
from Cambyses to Darius II. 

The Twenty-Eighth^ Twenty -Ninths and Thirtieth^ o^^ly 
an obscure succession of Saites, Mendesians, and Seben- 
nytes ; eight kings in all. 

This is the scaffolding which is to sustain the walls of 
the historic erection we are contemplating. 

SYNCHRONISMS. 

Starting from well-established facts, we find various fixed 
points of synchronism between Egyptian monuments and 
Asiatic history. Calculating upwards, we fail to find any 
thing certain in the Hebrew records, until the loth century 
before Christ. From Egyptian monuments we obtain the 
date of Moses, and conclude that the Exodus took place 
under the Pharaoh whose name is attached to the last 
imperial canicular cycle. We have also fixed the age 

9 



62 EGl'PT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

of Joseph, who was minister of Sesortosen of the Twelfth 
Dynasty, 

]7rom this we work upwards, on critical grounds, to the 
period when Abraham emerged from Chaldea. Abraham's 
date is 2870 B.C., 750 years after the reign of Menes began. 
Between the two, we have important monuments ; and there 
are S3mchronistic points down to the time of Joseph. 

Regular chronology began with Menes. His reign con- 
solidated Upper and Lower Egypt into one empire ; but it 
began when civilization was mature, and with registers 
of previous reigns, which must, at the very least, have 
stretched through 5,500 years. It had already language, 
written character, and a completed mythos. 

Down to the lowest time, the Pharaohs were called Lords 
of the Upper and Lower country. The government was 
based on twenty-seven Nomes ; ten belonging to the upper 
country, ten to the lower, and seven constituting the hepta- 
nomys, or Central Egypt. These Nomes were the indepen- 
dent bases of all democratic Egyptian life. Their existence 
was opposed to the despotic element in the later empire. 
With Menes, they possessed much power and many privi- 
leges. 

The Labyrinth was the temple and the tomb of their 
latest liberty; yet, even under the New Empire, every 
province had its own capital, shrine, and peculiar privi- 
leges. The formation of these twenty-seven Nomes, which 
was consummated before chronology begins, must have 
occupied a large part of the 5,500 years before Menes. It 
was a stage of life posterior to the family and the patriar- 
chal ; and a strong bond of common language and religion 
originally held them together. 

The language and people of China may be older than 
those of Egypt ; but the regular chronology of Egypt goes 
back to 5,000 3'ears before Christ, an advantage enjoyed 
by no other nation. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 63 

The Chinese have no traditions of the great flood. The 
cycle of sixty years ^ Avhich the Chinese use, is a primitive 
institution, and the key to their whole astronomical system. 
The old Indian cycles began with one of five years, prob- 
ably multiplied by twelve. This was the Chinese way. 
To find the time when the solar and lunar year started 
together, takes us back to 2375 b.c. The present notation 
of the months only goes back to 2000 b.c. There the real 
history begins. The Chinese used the old Babylonian 
gnomon. The inundation in the reign of Tao had no 
more to do with Noah's flood than the canals ! 

The world's history is the development of two races and 
two languages, — the Semitic and the Iranian. For the 
Egyptian is only the African deposit of a very early form 
of the Semitic, in which the Semitic germs are organized. 
We can link the Egyptian to the Chinese and the Turanian : 
we expect, therefore, to find some connection between their 
mythologies. 

People who say there is no authority for certain con- 
clusions, forget that language is the very best of author- 
ity. Egypt represents the real middle age of the world. 
It is the chrysalis of primeval Asia, in which a new life 
begins to stir. This Semitic branch stretched through 
Menes, even to the Mediterranean, and obtained positive 
rank in the world. It struggled on in antagonism to the 
land and race from which it had sprung. Both fell under 
the Aryans, who keep the throne of the world to this day. 
Egypt ^delded first to the Persian branch of the Aryans. 
Cyrus conquered the Medes and Bactrians ; and, by taking 
Babylon, subjected all Semitic nations to himself. But it 
was Alexander, the great European Aryan, who severed 
for ever the thread of Egyptian life. 

Renan denies the affinity between the language and reli- 
gion of Egypt and Asia, which Bunsen asserts ; but reit- 
erates Bunsen's assertion, when he admits elsewhere the 



64 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

identity of Coptic and Semitic pronouns. The Bible is on 
the side of Bunsen. Ham is the father of Canaan ; and it 
was the Semitic language of the Canaanites which the de- 
scendants of Abraham adopted. Those Canaanites, driven 
back from Egypt, became themselves the Pelasgi (Coptic, 
Pelashet) , or wanderers of the world. Modern history be- 
gins with Abraham. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

1. There is an historical connection between Greek 
mytholog}^ the primeval Bible record, and the oldest reli- 
gions of Egypt and Asia. 

2. The religion of Egypt is merely the mummy of the 
religion of Central Asia ; the deposit of the oldest mythol- 
ogy on African soil. 

3. Primeval Asia is the starting point for us and them. 

4. The Greeks did not invent their mythology ; they 
only humanized it. 

5. Moses adopted no ideas from Egypt which had not 
an older common source in Asia. The Bible contains no 
conscious mythology. Any personification of Divine ideas 
is foreign to its intention. 

6. The popular sentiment reflected in the Bible had its 
root nevertheless in old mythologic times. 

7. The personal history of the Jews begins with Abra- 
ham ; but many of the ancient traditions which he brought 
out from a mythological people clung to him and to Isaac 
and Jacob, were interwoven with the stor}^ of their lives, 
and influenced them to idolatry from the time of the Exodus 
to that of the Captivity. 

CONCLUSIONS IN REGARD TO LANGUAGE. 

I. Language develops quietly; but, in the end, its cen- 
tral stem is so modified that the oldest and the newest 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 65 

forms cannot hold intelligible communion with each other, 
any more than with their offshoots. 

2. Foreign words may come into its dictionary, but not 
into its grammar. 

3. Every stage of such a language, becoming more 
affluent in words, becomes poorer in its grammar. 

4. The Iranian languages, from India to Iceland and 
Lithuania, are identical in grammar and roots, as also are 
among themselves the different Semitic forms. Every 
Chinese word is a root, which may be a noun or a verb, 
according to its position ; consequently it is not yet an indi- 
vidualized stem. There was an interval of a thousand 
years between Charlemagne (the first king of the Ger- 
mans), and Francis II. (the last) ; and they both belonged 
to the same race. The art of writing existed in the time of 
Charlemagne, and German civilization has never been vio- 
lently broken up ; but these two persons could not under- 
stand each other if they were now to meet. 

These are the philological principles which assist in the 
development of the oldest chronologies, and which are to 
be borne in mind throughout our whole discussion. 

It is an unsatisfactory w^ay to begin to write history in 
the middle ; but this is necessary to indicate, in a general 
way, Egypt's position in the great tide of dividing immi- 
grating races. 

It is seen, then, that her civilization threw a bridge from 
Asia into Europe; and, standing upon it, we look "before 
and after." We believe with Bunsen, that the Hebrew resi- 
dence in the Delta was of long duration ; that seventy souls 
went down with Jacob into Egypt, was a steadfast tradition. 
The Eg3^ptians counted " bonds-people " among the " goods " 
or possessions of these new colonists. Abraham had car- 
ried down 318 fighting men; Jacob may easily have had 
1,500. Joseph made his brothers chief herdsmen of the 
royal flocks. Soon after, the crown owned all the land, 



66 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY, 

and then there was fertile pasturage in the Fayoum. In 
the first numbering, Moses showed 603,550 soldiers ; twenty 
years after, near Jericho, 601,730. There had been losses 
b}" war, sickness, hardship, and discipline. Their bond- 
age could not have begun till the Shepherds, a protect- 
ing kindred race, were driven out of the city of Avaris 
(the Scriptural Raamses), in the Delta, in the tenth year of 
Tuthmosis III. This oppressor was so hated, that coward- 
ly, fanatical Menepthah could never complete his tomb. 
In this year he began his great building operations : 215 
years from this, the Scripture period brings us to 1320 B.C., 
our assumed year of the Exodus ! The king, w^ho knew 
not Joseph, was a Pharaoh from the lately reconquered 
Upper Egypt. Sesortosen I. is the Sesostris of Herodotus. 
Birch gives us a remarkable inscription from the tomb of 
a lieutenant of his army, which savs, in the person of the 
dead man, "When, in the time of Sesortosen I., there was 
a great famine in all the districts, there was corn in mine." 

Only a sovereign, firm in power, could have lifted a hated 
slave into a viceroy. The position is changed again before 
Joseph asks permission to carry the body of Jacob into 
Hebron. He is then a rich man, but a private citizen ; and 
makes his request humbly, through a servant. Reckoning 
back from this period — the period of the famine — will 
help us to adjust the earlier chronology. The Scripture 
seems to imply that Abraham lived 175 years ; Isaac, 180; 
Jacob, 147 ; and Joseph, no. Now we have historical re- 
cords far older than the time of Abraham, but we know of 
no historical lives succeeding each other like these. These 
must be eras of migration^ then, as Bunsen thinks ; a sup- 
position strengthened by the recently discovered fact, that 
the Jews of Cochin China continue to date after the Exodus, 

Abraham emigrated into Canaan 2877 B.C. Isaac, born 
in the 26th year after this emigration, died in the looth 
year of Abraham,, aged 80. Jacob died in the 147th 3^ear 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 67 

of this era, or 42 years after his father. The Egyptian 
Hebrews, however, began a new era with the period of 
Jacob's coming into that country, and Joseph died in the 
iioth year of Jacob. Jacob was 70 when he went down 
into Egypt, in the 130th year of Abraham, and he lived to 
be 98. Joseph died at 78, in the iioth year of Jacob, 
when his great-grandson was 12 years old. 

At the time of Abraham's migration, the whole of Ca- 
naan and East Jordan was tributary to the king of Elam. 
This included South Babylonia, Arabia Petr^a, and the 
plain. The allied kings of the five cities were therefore a 
small body, and Abraham pursued only one detachment of 
their forces. Oldest inscriptions tell us that civilization 
came from South Babylonia. Rawlinson identifies " Kedor- 
laomer" with the " Kedor-mapula," or conqueror of the 
West, in these inscriptions. The circumstances by; which 
Abraham was surrounded can be found at no later date 
than we assign to him. This is confirmed by the astro- 
nomically ascertained date of the destruction of the cities 
of the plain, which occurred about the time of Isaac's birth 
in 2854 ^•^* Justin, borrowing from Trogus Pompeius, 
says, "The ancestors of the Phoenicians were compelled, 
by an earthquake near the Assyrian lake, to seek the coast." 
Now the chronology of Melkarth, in the island of Tyre, 
began in 2750 B.C. There was in Tyre a still older shrine, 
so they may easily have come to the coast a century earlier. 

THE BONDAGE. 

If the Israelites went into Egypt in the ninth year of Se- 
sortosen I., 2754 B.C., and stayed there till the eleventh 
of Menepthah, 1320 B.C., they were there 1,434 years 
(according to computations of Bunsen's first four volumes). 
In this period they changed from a nomadic to an agricul- 
tural people, and it closed with 215 years of bondage. In 



68 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

the first 200 years, if not beloved, they prospered greatly, 
and spread throughout the country as itinerant traders. 
When the Hyksos came in, their knowledge of the country 
might easily be valuable to these new rulers of a kindred 
race. The power of the Hyksos lasted for 929 years. 
From the restoration under Amos to the oppression of Tuth- 
mosis III., they doubtless kept very quiet; but union, inde- 
pendence, and national character were stimulated by 215 
years of endurance. The building of the canal opened a 
hope of escape ; then came Moses, the secret arming, and 
the Exodus. Fourteen hundred years is not too long for 
a people to grow from one family to two millions and a half 
of souls. It is perfectly clear that a period of this length is 
required to make the life of Abraham the legend Moses 
found it. The ancestors of Abraham are before chronology. 
Yet there is a strict chronology of the South-Babylonian em- 
pire, nearly a thousand years older; /.^., back to 3758 B.C. 
Abraham undoubtedly possessed some memorials of the 
2,000 years before his own time, — of the flood, &c. The 
traditions have a strict astronomical basis. The interval 
between Noah and Terah seems to proceed by similar geo- 
graphic and historic methods. See Gen. x. 21. 

From Apollonius Molon, it is said in Eusebius : "Man 
— i.e,^ Edom or Adam — was driven, after the Flood, from 
Armenia to Syria. This took place three generations be- 
fore Abraham. Abram had two sons ; one was the father of 
twelve Arab princes. From the Laugher (Isaac) descended 
twelve sons, of whom the youngest, Joseph, was the ances- 
tor of Moses." 

Arphaxad is the district of Arrapakhitis, on the south- 
western slope of the mountains, where the first men took ref- 
uge from flood and disaster on the northern plains. Elam is 
South Babylonia to the east of the Tigris ; Assur is to the 
east of the Upper Tigris ; Arphaxad, then, is near the 
sources of the Euphrates. Lud went to Asia Minor, crossed 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 



69 



the Halys, and settled Lydia. The Aramoeans or High- 
landers passed from Arphaxad into the land of the " Two 
Rivers " (see Aram and Uz in Nedjir) , as far as Northern 
Arabia. 

These geographical periods passed, then come the purely 
historical, — "The Mission," or the advanced settlement; 
"The Partition," or the division of lands, as when Abraham 
and Lot separated later; "The Passage," or the crossing 
of the Tigris. In the "Mission," the race descended from 
the hills; in the "Partition," a part branched off to South 
Arabia; in the "Passage," they crossed the Upper Tigris 
to the south-west. Then come two geographical entries, — 
Rohi (the old name of Edessa) , in Haran ; and Serug, to 
the west of it, once Osroene ; south-east were Resen and 
Ur of the Chaldees : places fixed, by the genius of D'An- 
ville, before Niebuhr found them. The names of Nahor 
and Terah are the first names of persons. 

Here we give the table which expresses the facts : — 



Elain Assiir Arphaxad. lud. Aram 

or or Primitive Chaldea, Ljdia on or 

S. Babylon. Assyria. toward Assyria. the Halys. Syria. 

438 years. 

The Mission. Hul. Geta, 

Selah, Uz in Mts. near 

432 years. N. Arabia. Lebanon. 



Heber. 

The Passage of the Tigris. 

464 years. 

Peleg. 

The Partition, 

239 years. 



Pohii Edessa. 
Shepherds. 
239 years. 

Serug^ Osroene. 
230 years. 

Nahor to Ur. 
148 years from the Skirtus. 

Terah to Haran. 
275 years from Ur. 

10 



S. Arabia. 
Togtan, father of 
13 tribes. 



70 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

Or, 70-I-205, — his age added to the year dated from his 
emigration, an accident which seems to have happened 
more than once. The 148 years of Nahor are from the 
date of the settlement on the Skirtus, near Ur and Haran. 
Terah begat three sons at the age of seventy. Sons born 
to previous generations were born at a natural period. The 
chronology of Ur began with Nahor ; and these children 
were probably born in the 70th 3^ear of that chronology. 
Terah then moves from Ur to Haran, with Abram, aged 
45 ; and Abram's wife, and Lot his grandson, in the 70th 
year of Ur. Five years after, at the age of 50, Abram 
moves on to Canaan, where Terah had intended to go. 
Now add to the 148 years from the Skirtus the 70 of Ur, 
and we have 218 years. Terah was thirteen at the time of 
his emigration, which, taken away, leaves 205. There- 
fore, — 

From Arphaxad to Nahor are 933 years, 
to death of Terah, 70 ,, 

to Abram in Canaan, 5 years. = 1,008 years. 

Which brings the post-diluvian origines to 3885 or 4000 B.C. 
The chronology of Egypt is fixed as far back as 3623 B.C. ; 
that of Babylon to 3784 b.c. These last dates certainly 
represent a civilization which it had taken thousands of 
years to form. 

Having indicated, in the outlines of the Egyptian dy- 
nasties, the date of the Exodus, we have travelled back- 
ward from it to the period of the original distribution of 
races, along the Scripture record. It is impossible to 
give here the demonstrations which have filled nearly five 
thousand octavo pages ; but we see nothing careless, 
nothing purely speculative, in Bunsen's work. We now 
return to the Exodus, and work out the descending historic 
line. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 71 

THE EXODUS. 

After the death of Raamses II., the oppressor of the nine- 
teenth dynasty, Egypt fell into decay. His reign had pro- 
duced every symptom of revolt. The Shepherds made 
frequent inroads. To clear the country, Menepthah sent 
all the kindred " lepers " into the quarries on the edge of 
Arabia. At last, he allowed them, or the chances of civil 
disturbance allowed them, to gather in the old city of the 
Hebrews, — Avaris, or Raamses. There they prepared for 
an outbreak. A priest of Heliopolis there founded a reli- 
gious brotherhood, in direct opposition to the religion of 
the country. Menepthah went out against them, but the 
courage of the cowardly fanatic failed at the last. He left 
his captains to follow through the sea, and fled with the 
gods he ignorantly worshipped. He took with him to Ethio- 
pia his son, Sethos II., then five years old. For thirteen 
years, the Shepherds desolated Egypt. Either this is the 
Egyptian account of the Exodus, or their records say noth- 
ing about it. In this account, Moses is called Oarsiph, 
" beloved of Osiris ; " as if the gods of Egypt had once ap- 
proved of him. The Shepherds w^ere his allies. 

ARGUMENTS. 

1. It was not until the Shepherds were driven back, in 
the time of Tuthmosis III., that the Pharaohs would have 
dared to ill-treat the Hebrews. Sethos I. and Raamses II. 
were the oppressors; and, afterward, the religious fanati- 
cism of Menepthah made the Jews desperate. It is quite 
clear, that Moses could not have conferred with Aaron, and 
armed his men, at a time when Egypt ruled the peninsula. 

2. The Jews were certainly not in Palestine at any time 
previous to this : for the great Raamses conquered Pales- 
tine ; and all its people and tribes, afterwards driven out by 



72 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

the Jews, are enumerated on the monuments of his con- 
quests. The names of Hittites and Amorites we find, but 
not the name of the children of Israel. 

3. The "Solymites," or Shepherds, were expelled by 
Sethos II. ; and when Josephus says, that the Hebrews 
went out through Sinai, in the reign of Bocchoris^ he does 
not speak of another sovereign, but merely gives the offi- 
cial or "throne name" of Menepthah. Raamses had been 
strong ; Menepthah was weak. The store-city the He- 
brews had been compelled to build was called after their 
oppressor. In his records occurs the name Tanet-r, or 
Holy Land, by which the Phoenicians had designated their 
country from the beginning. In a papyrus-roll of his 
reign, preserved at Ley den, the scribe Kanitsir writes to his 
chief: "Now, I have heard the message which my Lord 
sent, saying. Give corn to the men and soldiers and He- 
brews, who are drawing the stone for the great fortress of 
the palace of Raamses, lover of Truth, delivered to the 
general, Amennema. I have given them their corn every 
month, according to the good instruction of my Lord." The 
original of this paper is given in Bunsen's fifth volume. 
One of the objects in building these gigantic cities, whose 
separate structures are enumerated in the papyrus of 
Pinebsa, now in the British Museum, is indicated by a 
treaty, recorded on the walls of Thebes, between Raamses 
II. and Chetasar, King of the Hittites : "If the subjects of 
Raamses go over to Chetasar, that king is to compel them 
to return." 

At the time that Moses was born and educated, whatever 
may have been the condition of the government, the civili- 
zation and literature of the Egyptians had reached their 
highest point. How ancient royal libraries were, we have 
no means of telling. The earliest papyri represent scribes 
registering flocks and harvests. In the first recorded dy- 
nasty, they had already "Annals of the Monarchy." The 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 73 

" Annals of the New Empire " extended fifteen hundred 
years farther back than any ancient records known. A 
fragment of Livy, at Berlin, dated in the first century of 
our era, is the oldest manuscript out of Egypt. The 
"Book of the Dead," at Turin, goes back to the thirteenth 
century B.C. Songs, annals, almanacs, and contracts were 
frequently packed into the vases in the tombs. Raamses, 
the oppressor, built a library at Thebes, 1350 B.C., — thirty 
years before the Exodus. Its ruins, as described by Diodo- 
rus (i. 49), may still be traced; and at the entrance sat 
Thoth and Saf, the gods of Wisdom and History. Behind 
Wisdom, with significant transcendentalism, sat the god of 
Hearing ; behind History, the god of Seeing, Many ex- 
isting papyri were written in this Rameseion. Lepsius 
found at Thebes the tombs of the librarians. The office 
of Neb-nufre, "Superior over the books," was hereditary. 
This was not the first library ; for, long before the gods of 
Wisdom and History had for titles the " Master and Mistress 
of the Hall of Books." — "They, of all people, stored up 
most for recollection," said Herodotus ; so a library of 
400,000 volumes was easily collected in Alexandria, at 
a time when the private collection of Aristotle served 
for all Greece. There Thales learned to measure heights 
by shadows ; there Archimedes perfected his water-screw, 
and Eudoxus built his observatory. Shall we ever know 
what modern civilization owes to Egypt? Thence came 
the numerals ; thence, thinks Taylor, all modern weights 
and measures. We never suspect, when we fill our demi- 
john, that it is the very vessel Moses called a " damagan." 

It was in Egypt that Pythagoras first heard of immortal- 
ity. The records show that the priests believed in one 
God. They held the name of God unpronounceable, 
and expressed him by the Hebrew formula, "I am that I 
am," — ^^ mik-pu-nuk.^^ It is a curious question, that no one 
seems able to answer, whether this formula is found in 



74 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

priestly records before the era when Moses himself might 
have given the impulse to such a faith. 

We have shov^n that the era of the Exodus can be precisely 
fixed, by ascertaining the year in w^hich the 15th of Epiphi 
corresponded to the April full-moon. It is impossible that 
there should be any doubt extending over fifty or sixty years 
since the Sothiac cycle began in Menepthah's reign, — a 
point as clearly fixed as our own leap-year. 

JEWISH CHRONOLOGY, THEN, HAS THREE PERIODS : 

1. The period of Exodus, closing eighteen years after the death 
of Moses. 

2. The time of the Judges, and the undivided kingdom. 

3. The period of the kings of the divided kingdom. 

I. EXODUS. 

Year of Exodus. B.C. 

1. The 15th of Epiphi, the Exodus took place .... 1320 

2. The Jews leave Sinai, in the second month . . . . 13 19 

3. Miriam dies in the first month 131S 

They journey from Kadesh to Akaba, with one month's rest at 
Hor. The middle of this year, they arrive at the brook 
Zend, the south-eastern part of the Red Sea. 

4- ) C 1317 

5. > They advance to the North, over against Jericho . < 1316 

6. 3 ( 1315 

22. The end of Moses' leadership occurs 1299 

23. The first year of Joshua comes 1298 

36. The last year of Raamses in Canaan ...... 1287 

40. The last year of Joshua east of Jordan is 12S1 

41. Joshua crosses Jordan six years after Raamses, or . . 1280 
42 to 46. Joshua's six years of war in Canaan bring us to 1275 
47. The death of Joshua, in the 47th year of the Exodus to 1274 

Eighteen years intervene before they pay tribute to Meso- 
potamia ; three hundred, before the building of the temple, 
1014 B.C., — a date astronomically and critically determined. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 75 

Moses went into Midian in the life of Raamses II. He re- 
turned to find Menepthah on the throne. In the nineteenth 
year after the death of Joshua, the Jews became tributary 
to the Assyrians. They remained so until the election of 
Saul. The first " Shepherds " of the Fifteenth Dynasty 
were Arabs, whose names correspond to the Amalekite rule, 
which, the Arabs say, lasted eight hundred years in Egypt. 
The second were, doubtless, Southern Palestinians akin to 
Jethro. What created the mutiny at Kadesh Barnea, when 
the Jews desired so earnestly to return to Egypt? Only five 
days away, on the direct route of the caravans, where they 
could hear of the dismay of the Egyptians, of the success- 
ful inroads that followed the Exodus, they desired to return, 
and enrich themselves. This was the real difficulty Moses 
had to meet. He and Aaron threw themselves upon their 
faces to pray for aid, and finally led the Hebrews round the 
Gulf of Akaba, into the country east of Jordan. How great 
must have been the enthusiasm and faith that conquered ! 

The coincidences which determine these points are found 
in three separate lines of investigation, and cannot be acci- 
dental. Nor is there any satisfactory account to be given 
of the tributary condition of the Hebrews, nineteen years 
after the death of Joshua, except the sudden rise of the As- 
syrian power. The enumeration, in the twelfth chapter of 
Joshua, is a cotemporary document. This is proved by the 
account, in the first chapter, of their taking possession of 
Canaan ; and the mention of Kirjath Sipher, or the " City of 
Writing," by its early name. The nations they had dispos- 
sessed now paid them tribute. The two tribes and a half 
beyond Jordan formed a living wall ; yet, when they be- 
came tributary to Mesopotamia, 1246 B.C., they remained 
so for one hundred and seventy-five years. Nothing 
changed, but the names of their rulers. Under David, 
they rose, for the first time, to the height of power, which 
had enabled them to take possession of Canaan in the be- 



76 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

ginning. No imperfection of their own government will 
explain this continued dependence. That was due to the 
rising power of Assyria. Semiramis was no myth, but a 
Phoenician of the hated race they knew, — the wife of the 
Assyrian satrap at Ascalon. 

POINTS SETTLED. 

1. The Exodus can only have been possible between 1324 and 
1320 B.C. 

2. The undisturbed possession of the peninsula is only to be 
explained by the war in Egypt. 

3. Moses determined the destiny of the Hebrews at Kadesh. 

4. Canaan could not have been conquered seven years earlier 
than 1280 B.C., for Raamses was then raging through Palestine; 
nor seven years later, for Assyria then claimed it. 

5. The original difficulties grow out of our possessing only a 
few shreds of the old story. 

From the Exodus to the death of Joshua, then, was . ^"^ years. 

The supremacy of Mesopotamia lasted 8 ,, 

The time of Othniel, Independence, and the Judges 

lasted 7 V 

The supremacy of Moab 18 ,, 

n Ehud 7 „ 

„ N. Canaan 20 ,, 

„ Barak and Deborah 7 " 

,, Midian — ,, 

„ Gideon 17 11 

,, Abimelech, son of Gideon ... 3 i» 

Of Tola, Ibdam, Elon, and Abdon in Canaan ... 48 ,, 

Of Jair, the Ammonites, and Jepthah in E. Jordan . 48 ,, 



SUPREMACY OF THE PHILISTINES. 

The rule of the High Priests lasted 40 years. 

C Saul 22 ,, 

Sixty-six years were divided by < David 41 ,, 

( Solomon .... 3 ,, 
And the Jews lived in Disunion 306 years. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TOR 2'. 77 

This whole period coincides with the Assyrian supremacy 
in Western Asia. It began the year after Joshua's death, 
1273 B.C., and came to its height at the death of Semira- 
mis, in 1222 B.C. Sardanapalus is the Tiglath Pileser of 
the Scripture ; and, in his day, the Jews were carried to 
Babylon (see Judges iii. 8). Khusan Risathaim, the 
Judge of the Two Rivers, was the Assyrian satrap who 
had married Semiramis. In the Assyrian tongue, this 
name means only satrap of Mesopotamia. For Semiramis, 
Palestine was only a bridge to Egypt, which she con- 
quered in 1250 B.C., twenty-three years later. Her suc- 
cessors strained every nerve to get possession of it. 

There is no instance, known to us, of a history so faith- 
ful to its own pu7'j)ose as that of our own Scripture. 

The Old Empire of Egypt was isolated as that of China 
was. The New Empire was drawn under the influence and 
policy of Asia. That was a noble life, which the long Hyk- 
sos usurpation had chilled ; and, if the New Empire had not 
expelled the Hebrews, it might have come to new power. 
To the Egyptians, therefore, the Exodus was God's judg- 
ment, — a link in a well-devised plan of avenging justice. 
A new invasion of Palestinians was merely a cover for the 
Exodus, — the Sicilian vespers in which Asia avenged her- 
self on Egypt! When, in the third year of Menepthah, 
such invaders slew the first-born, they were messengers of 
the Most High, in Hebrew eyes. When the king fled, the 
invaders plundered all the Delta, and, to his fanatical hor- 
ror, devoured all the sacred animals. Very likely, Jethro 
incited this invasion. It was the death-blow of the New 
Empire. In thirteen years, the invaders were expelled ; but 
the strength of the nation was gone for ever. The Nine- 
teenth Dynasty outlived the Exodus only twenty-two years. 
Raamses III., the "Man of Memphis," restored order. He 
conquered back the old renown, and erected sumptuous 
buildings. In the fiftieth year of this Dynasty, 1280 b.c, 

II 



78 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 

Semiramis conquered Egypt. No more victories, no 
more monuments. Shishak, the founder of the Twenty- 
Second Dynasty^ ransacked Jerusalem in the reign of Re- 
hoboam. The names of his family indicate some Assyrian 
connection. Two hundred and fifty 3'ears before, in the 
time of Eli, the high priest, Raamses XII., had sent a sacred 
mission from Thebes to Nineveh. Perhaps it went to 
cure of some illness Nefruari, "Beauty of the Sun," who is 
recorded to have been healed, and married to Raamses. 
This account, given by Macrobius and a stele in the Lou- 
vre, translated by Champollion, may indicate the opening 
of an alliance, which ended by breaking up the isolation of 
the empire. In the reign of David, an Edomite prince had 
taken refuge in Egypt. Solomon married Pharaoh's daugh- 
ter. War-chariots and cavalry were sent to him from 
Egypt. Hezekiah evidently thought it bad policy to lean 
on Egypt ; yet kindly memories prevailed with him over 
the memories of the bondage. "Thou shalt not abhor an 
Egyptian, for thou wert a stranger in his land," is said in 

Deut. xxiii. 7, 8, et seq. See also — 

B c. 

Hosea xi. 16 770 

Zechariah ix. 11 734 

Nahum 733 

Isaiah vii 74^ 

Rahab, which means a "blustering do-nothing," is used 
for the first time in Isa. xxx. 1-7. 

B.C. 

Jeremiah xliii.-xliv 604 to 585 

Ezekiel xxix. 1-16 588 

These Scripture references fill out the historic picture. 

THE PENTATEUCH. 

In some portions of this book, God is called "Elohim," with 
the verb in the singular. The word might be rendered as 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HI ST OR T. 



79 



an abstraction, "God-head." In others, he is designated as 
"Jahveh," — pronounced Jahovah, improperly, by throwing 
into it the vowels of the word Adonai (Lord) , usually writ- 
ten beneath it, to show that it was unpronounceable ; thus : 
J. H. V. H. 

a o a 

Tuch shows that the Elohim is a connected story, to 
which the Jewish Jehovist, thinking to fill a gap, adds 
his scraps of tradition. 

I St. We have in it the earliest Registers, or Pedigrees. 

2d. Brief memdranda attached to them. 

3d. Songs commemorative of great events. 

4th. Detailed stories. 

In Genesis, then, under the first head, we have to com- 
pare two entirely different registers. 



Jehovah. 

Adam. 



Quayn. Habel. 
I Hanokh, or Enos. 
I Hirad. 



Seth. 



Mehuyael. 
I Metusad. 



I Hadah. | Lamech. | Zillah, 
Tubal. Jubal. Tubal Cain. 

Shepherd. Musiciaa. Coppersmith. 



Nahama. 



Elohim. 
Adam. 



Seth. 



I Enos. 



Quajnan. 
I Maha-la-el. 
i Tered. 



Hanokh. 



Metusael. 



Lamech. 
I Noah. 



I Shem. I Ham. | Japhet. 



In the oldest record, God is called Jahveh Elohim. This 
is the story from Aramea. In the later, he is called Seth, 
or Set; and man is called Enos. This is the tradition of 
Phoenicia. The Aramean tradition does not come down to 
the time of the flood, or rather has no necessity to deal 
with it, since it does not follow the descendants of Lamech. 
The other includes it, and tells of the house of Noah. At 
Iconium, in Asia Minor, Hanokh, the father of Lamech, is 
said to have predicted the flood, but no one would listen. 
Of the three races, — 



80 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

Ham or Cham = Chem, means the da^-k. 

Sem, the glowing; from whom came Adam or Edom the red^ 

whence Phoenician, also the 7'ed. 
Japhet \vas \h.Q,fair. 

Of purely mythical names, we have, in the Bible accounts, 
Set, Enos, Adam, Havvah, the Life-Giving, and Abel, the 
Vanishing. Quain is the type of those who bear arms, and 
cultivate the soil. 

Nod is flight. 

Cain, Nad, or the fugitive.. 

Hanokh means " taught of God." 

A life of three hundred and sixty-five years seems to in- 
dicate a mythical character : — 

Hirad means " citizen." 
Ma-hu-ya-el, " struck of God." 
Metusael, " Man of God." 
Lamech, the " Robber." 
Hadah, " Beauty." 
Zillah, a " Shadow." 

The man of God stands between Cain, the Marauder, and 
Ired, "Builder of cities." 

CONCLUSIONS. 

I. The orders of Gods, Semitic, Egyptian, and Greek, 
are identical. 

II. They belong to primeval conceptions. 

III. The Biblical story is the only one free from great 
monstrosity. 

IV. In that is the Ideal element of one God, restored by 
Abraham. The historic element consists of primitive Ara- 
maic recollections. 

V. The historic record does not, at first, refer to men ; but 
to certain epochs, or changes of residence, of which the 
record had descended, but was not understood. 



EGTPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 81 



RESTORATION OF REGISTER. 

God as Jehovah Elohim, God as Seth, or Seti. 

created. 

Adam the Red, or Enos the Strong. 
Humanity develops as 

I. Cain the Smith, I. Cain, or Qiiayn, &c. 
before whom the nomad disap- 
pears ; also, a builder of cities. 

II. Hanokh, the Seer and the IV. Hanokh. 
God of the solar year. 

III. Hirad, dweller in towns. III. Ired. 

IV. Ma-hu-ya-el, " God-struck." II. Ma-ha-la-el. 
V. Aletusael, man of God. V. Metusael. 

VI. Lamech, the Strong. VI. Lamech. 

The ke}^ to this restoration was given us by the JNIosaic 
author, when he put the two registers in juxtaposition. 

Till the time of Joel, there was no tampering with this 
record. First came changes in the Samaritan, then in the 
Septuagint ; then Eusebius altered it to produce ecclesiastical 
conformity. Then came the two monks, — the Byzantines, 
Amianas and Panodorus, — with their schemes of reduction. 



AN APPROXIMATION TO EPOCHS ON BUNSEN S PLAN. 

The rule of Seth = 912 years ; that of Adam = 930 years ; 
that of Enos — 905 years. Of course, these periods are set 
aside as mythical. Seth is a God ; Adam and Enos 
equally represent the first man. 

SECOND EPOCH. 

Kenaan lived . . . ..... 910 years. 

Mahalael ,, ....... 895 ,, 

Ired ,, 962 ,, 

Hanokh ,, 365 

Metusael ,, 967 

Lamech ,, 'j'j'j ,, =l 4,878 years in all. 



«5? 



82 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 



EPOCH OF THE FLOOD. 

Noah lived 600 hundred 3'ears before the flood. This is 
the great cosmic period of the Patriarchs, the equation of 
the solar and lunar years. Josephus tells us of it. Freret 
has unravelled it. Make the calculation, and we shall see 
that the previous epochs of the primeval world were sup- 
posed to have lasted eight cycles. 

Then Noah's life to the flood was 600 years, or the 9th cycle. 
Shem's = 600 ,, ,, loth cycle. 

Of the 350 years Noah is said to have lived after the 
flood, fifty belong to the period before the flood, where the 
astronomical calculation is deficient to just that extent.* 
We see, therefore, that all estimates of time, before the re- 
moval of the race to Arphaxad, were cyclical. We must 
now try to discover how the geographical dates which 
marked the descent from the mountains, changed into eras 
marked by the life or names of individuals. 

The years of Noah after the flood were half a cycle . 300 years. 

The years of Shem were a cycle 600 ,, 

And cyclical time after the flood was 900 ,, 

HISTORICAL AXD GEOGRAPHICAL PERIODS. 

The residence in Arphaxad was . . . 43S years. 

In Selah. the ^Mission 433 ,, 

,, Heber, the Crossing 464 ,, 

,, Peleg, the Partition 239 ,, 

,, Rehu, the Pastoral 239 ,, 

,, Serug or Osroene 230 ,, 

,, Nahor, colonies in Padan x\ram . . 148 ,, 

,, Terah in Haran, Abram till 75 years old 275 years = 2,466 years. 



* I have not been able;to find the explanation of this assumption. It 
maj be in some inedited paper of Freret. 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 83 

The distinctly historic period begins with Arrapakhitis. 
In round numbers, this dates back to 5000 B.C. In Selah, 
the settlements were pushed forward. In Heber, they 
crossed the Tigris ; and then all the advances are to the 
Southwest, till Abraham crosses the Euphrates. Terah is, 
perhaps, a person merged in an epoch. He not only went 
to Haran^ it will be seen, but his son Haran died before he 
went. Did he name the new land for the dead son? It is 
evident the record w^as made when the name had become 
fixed. After the cyclical period, we have another, evidently 
indefinable, before the Semites dispersed in the highlands 
of Asia. Now the history of Chamitic life in Egypt re- 
quires 4,000 years before the Aramaic emigration. During 
this primitive time, can we find any space for the story of 
Nimrod and Babel? This is either a myth, or the oldest 
fragment of history in the world. Now, Nimrod, the Kos- 
sack (not Cushite, but Koshite), could not have lived later 
than 4000 B.C. The Kossians were an ancient Scythian 
tribe in the mountains, east of the Tigris. These people, 
a far older race than the Semitic, lived in the plains of 
Shinar. It would seem as if the marauding life of Nim- 
rod might have driven them across the Tigris, and started 
the emigration that followed. If we make the first histori- 
cal starting-point, Babylon, 3784 B.C., we leave room for 
Nimrod. His was not a transient influence : it was as sub- 
versive and permanent as the fancied confounding of speech, 
which followed the destruction of his tower. It is to this 
day deeply impressed upon the Asiatic continent. 

Philo of Byblus said, "Babylon was not built by Semira- 
mis, as Herodotus said ; but by Babylon, son of Belus, 2,000 
years before." Before the building of Babylon, there was 
a long line of forgotten Chaldean kings, and in their his- 
tory that of Nimrod forms the first decisive break. He, the 
K^ssacx, in/adai thsir territory, anil b.iilt in their field 
a mighty watch-tower. Their descendants overthrew his 



84 BGl'PT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 

usurped dominion before the building of the cit}'. The 
consequences of the mixing and scattering of races which 
ensued, were momentous, and tradition preserved them. 
The first compiler of the record knew nothing of the Kosh- 
ite tribe, and misunderstood the reference. 

ABRAHAM. 

Abraham did not hesitate to adopt or fall into the Phoeni- 
cian dialect, although he rejected the Phcenician faith. If 
he preserved his native xVramaic, a mixed family of depend- 
ents could not be expected to do so. The old tongue of 
Tyre and Sidon is pure Hebrew. If he had turned with 
horror from the idolatry of iVram, that of Phoenicia was 
far more corrupt; but in spite of him, and very naturally, 
many mythological references were mixed up with the nar- 
rative of his descendants. 

Evangelical Christians sav that Jesus was crucitied on 
Freya's day, or Friday, and see no impropriety in it. The 
mixed use of Elohim, Jehovah, and Seth, in the narrative, 
shows that the old Hebrews fell into similar habits. The 
patriarchs were historical persons ; but, between Joseph and 
Moses, many symbols and stories of the pre-Abramic pe- 
riod got interwoven with the popular Epos. The names of 
Esau and Israel were mvtholoo-ical, borrowed from Pho^ni- 
cian story, perhaps indignantly applied in retort for claims 
set up for these false gods. Thus, the name of Is-ra-El 
mav ha^'e been the proud assertion that their chief was the 
true and onlv "Wrestler with God." 

We have already sketched the Egyptian framework into 
which the Hebrew narrative should be litted. We then 
proceeded to tix the period of the Exodus, and worked 
backward and forward from it till we had outlined the 
Hebrew story subsequent to Abraham. Then we went 
back to the Pentateuch, and dissected its reo-isters ; a work 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 85 

which would have been uninteUigible in the beginning, and 
if undertaken without the hght shed on it by the later story. 
The reader who would profit from what is set before him, 
must consent to work. Bunsen's pages will never serve to 
wile awav an idle moment. 

Having left the Hebrew branch of our great inquiry in a 
form likely to be interesting and useful to the Biblical stu- 
dent, we proceed to mention some matters purely critical, 
and to touch upon some others relating to the literature and 
mythologies of Phoenicia and Egypt, and necessary to the 
student who would inquire further. Since the Armenian 
version of Eusebius, the authority of Berosus is undisputed. 
We may expect still to excavate from Phoenicia some re- 
mains of the time of Abraham. The burial of Jacob at 
Hebron seems attested bv the immense ruins there ; and 
whatever shakes the basis of Ottoman power in the Holy 
Land, will make it possible to investigate that site. While 
Bunsen was writing, the sarcophagus of Ashmuneser, king 
of Sidon, was discovered, and carried to France. Why 
could not the walls of the Louvre charm away its secret? 
Then, perhaps, it could have told us whether Homer was 
blind, whether Semiramis sent to Sidon for its famous glass 
mirrors, and who bought the Palais-Royal jewelry manu- 
factured there in the Trojan era ! Bunsen does not doubt 
that Philo of Byblus had access to very important records ; 
that the San-Con-Iath was not so much the work of one 
author, as the earliest sacred book of Phoenicia preserved 
like the Torah of the Jews. Long before the time of 
Hiram, they must have had permanent records ; and that 
king introduced many changes into the sacred calendar. 
Access to such records explains why Philo tacked together 
two different cosmogonies, like the old writer in Genesis, 
and the fragments he preserves of the San-Con-Iath are a 
brilliant confirmation of the historical character of the Bible 
tradition. 

13 



86 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

As regards the origin of the Semitic name for God 
(Sun, Fire), there is no doubt that lAO, the Phoenician 
name, is the abbreviation of Iabe or Iehovah. Urim and 
Thummin, Phoenician Light and Truth, beamed from the 
Hebrew priests' breast-plate. The Kerubim (cherubim) of 
the garden were only revolving flames, the tradition of 
which kept the emigrants from turning back ; perhaps be- 
cause a volcanic agency preceded the overwhelming flood. 
Seraphim meant, in the beginning, running flames, from 
which it came to be applied to poisonous snakes. The old 
form of El gave the four eyes to the Kerubim, and the six 
wings to the Seraphim. Yet the recent title of an article, 
" The God of Israel once the Sun god," does not convey 
the truth. The nations of Central Asia were the worship- 
pers of an invisible God, like the North-American Indians ; 
and it was to that original faith that Abraham returned 
when surrounding idolatries had corrupted the customs of 
his people. The oldest authentic name of God is Seth. 
Set-Typhon corresponds to Saturn. The sacred Dog-Star, 
Sothis, bears the same name. In the Bible, Seth is the 
father of Enos or Man. Kevan is the name translated 
Chiun or Keeun (Amos v. 26), which was the idol wor- 
shipped in the wilderness. 

A few points of contact between the Biblical and the 
Phoenician stories deserve attention. Hercules wrestled 
with ^'Typhon," "the meridian sun in the sand," as Jacob 
wrestled with El-ohim. He was woimded, like Jacob, in 
the thigh ; and, like him, called the Wrestler (Isra = Palai- 
mon). Usov, his brother, was a hunter who wore shaggy 
skins, and, like the Hebrew Esau, went away from home to 
live. The great pair of Gods were El-iun and Behuth, 
Adoni and Baalti, Lord and Mistress. The God El sacrifices 
Yadid, his "only-begotten" and "well-beloved son," and be- 
heads his daughter Zillah. If the God would sacrifice his 
children, of course the man must, or obversely ; if the man 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 87 

did, the God must : and at last the prostitution of woman- 
hood, and the sacrifice of manhood, symbolized by circum- 
cision, were substituted for death. 

Tauthe or Thoth, is said to have invented the first 
alphabet, made of serpents. Canaan had a brother who 
added to this Phoenician alphabet three letters. He was 
called Aram ; he was the Syrios of Herodotus : and Bunsen 
believes that it was Abraham the Syrian who thus com- 
pleted the alphabet. What relation serpents had to the 
earliest alphabet^ it is now impossible to say. Philo says 
that the Greek Theta owed its form to the Egyptian habit of 
designating the Deity by a ringed serpent, with its head 
turned inward, the dot representing the eye of God in the 
world. But the serpent was the name and symbol of the 
Phoenician letter Tet, which preceded the Greek Theta ; 
and that Greek letter still re-presents the Deity in abbre- 
viated writing. When knowledge was considered a Divine 
thing, forbidden to the mass of men, it is not wonderful 
that letters should grow out of cabalistic signs. 

The psychical myth was represented by Osiris. His 
worship is the intellectual centre of the worship of Egypt. 
The perfect soul is the son of God, Osiris ; Man, who, hav- 
ing passed through the judgments of the lower world, was 
at last reconciled to his Father. 

NOTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT.' 

I. Cosmogonic worship, as of Ptah, or Hephaistos. 

II. Of the Solar Power, as in Ra, or Helios. 

III. Of Time and Space, as Seb and Nu. 

IV. Of Psychical worship or the Divine Rule of Man, as in 

Osiris. 

Ptah is the oldest God, as yet unendowed with the sym- 
bols of the Sun. He is an Ideal. Only a Creator. He is 
the God who shapes the Cosmic ^gg on the potter's wheel. 
Helios and his successors represent the solar power, and 



88 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

bear its symbols. In Osiris, God himself appears as man, 
the child of Time and Space, — a myth which has not yet 
lost rule over the minds of men. Upper Egypt calls this 
divine man Osiris. Lower Egypt calls him Seth. Seth is 
the Phallic-god, type of the sun, in the rage of the Dog- 
Star. Osiris is not a deified man, but justified man is 
God as Osiris. The story of Osiris is the story of the circle 
of the year, of the sun dying away and resuscitating itself 
again. His name is a riddle. Isis is its first element. It 
is written Hes-Iri. This means "eye of the world;" but 
it is probable that a better meaning attached to it, as a 
primitive Aramaic root. 

HS. is the name and sign of the Throne of Isis. H. S 
toreth, or throne of Astarte, indicates this also; but how 
came the Eg3^ptians to use only the first syllable of this 
name, and what does it mean? Philo savs that Astarte 
found a star which had dropped from Heaven. She picked 
it up, and put it in the temple at Tyre. Now the polar 
star of the Phoenicians was the brilliant Beta of the Little 
Bear, which the Arabs still call " The Star." 

Three thousand years before Christ, this was nearer to 
the pole than any other conspicuous star. The above 
story merely tells us that it was sacred to Astarte. The 
Arabs call the square in the Great and Little Bears, the 
Bier, or N. HaS. Therefore it is evident that the worship 
of Astarte was coincident with the period when this star 
became the Pole-Star. It is not an Aramaic name ; it is 
the word translated x\rcturus in Job ix. 9, and xxxviii. 32. 
The Edomite colonies, driven by the convulsions of the 
Dead Sea to the coast, date from 2800 B.C., which co- 
incides with the suggestions of the above statement. "Hes" 
has no meaning in the Egyptian. Hathor, however, meant 
the "world." The two " Has toreth" were thrown into one 
about 2000 B.C. HaS meant a bier; but HS., the accented 
form, meant "throne" or seat: the whole word, Hes-Asar, 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 89 

expressed the abstract conception of the Divine Power, — 
"Throne of the World." Hesiri is a rebus. Now the date 
of 2500 B.C. is given as the earliest at which this Beta of 
the Little Bear was likely to be used as a pole-star. The 
Chaldee system of astral symbols has its date determined 
in a similar way. The Bull (Tor) indicated the vernal 
equinox and generative power. This became possible in 
its actual astral connection 3000 B.C. 

Here is a Harmony of JVames, which shows whence 
Egypt derived language and religion ; not indeed from 
Phoenicia, but from an older common source. 



PHCENICIAN. 


EGYPTIAN. 


Set, 


Set. 


Ba'al, 


Bal. 


(Ptah) the opener with seven 


Pth. Hephaistos. 


forces, the Semitic week. 




Esmun, 


Esmun. Eighth Hermes 


Tet, the Serpent, 


Tet. Hermes. 


Amon, the Sculptor, 


Amun, the concealed. 


Nebo, 


A-nebu. 


Kon Heracles, 


Khonsa. Heracles. 


Ur, God of Light, 


Her. God of Day. 


Asar, the Mighty, 


Hes-Iri-Hesar. 


Hanokhe, 


Anuke. 


Teneth, Tenait, 


N.T. Athena-Tenait. 


HaS. (toreth) Throne, 


HS. Throne. 



Yet Renan denies that there is any philological connec- 
tion between the Phoenician and the Egyptian. The studies 
of George Rawlinson, Master of Ancient History at Oxford, 
however, sustain Bunsen, even when Rawlinson is not 
aware of it himself. Ancient Cushite (Kossite) tribes coursed 
over the central Asiatic plains ; and he shows that the 
ancient sacred Chaldean tongue was the Galla of Ethiopia, 
— the Biblical C?^5y^.^ Set was an Egyptian Moloch. Eg3'pt 
soon abolished human sacrifice. Osiris, who suffers like 



90 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

Christ, ruled it with a law of conscience. The Egyptians 
were the first who made a dogma of the immortality of the 
soul. (See the "Book of the Dead," and the assertions of 
the Greeks confirmed by the monuments.) The belief 
in the transmigration of souls was a provincialism of their 
own. It was because of it that the Ethiopian animal wor- 
ship at last conquered Egypt ; or had that provincial belief 
been the first evidence of the Ethiopian influence? The 
"Book of the Dead" exhibits, as the groundwork of their 
religion, moral responsibility, of which we find few traces 
in the Vedas. There is a great similarity between their 
ideas of duty and those of the Decalogue, or the seven 
commands of Abraham, supposed to be so much older. 
The immortal soul is banished from God by misconduct. 
Faith charges the body with all sin, and would annihilate 
it; but Man shall see God at the end of his wanderings. 

In the Egyptian novel of "The Two Brothers," the belief 
in transmigration furnishes the machinery. The hero may 
die as many times as the author pleases. He may become 
a tree ; but at last his sin will be overtaken, and he will be- 
come a man. The builders of the P3^ramids must save 
their bodies, if thev would remain immortal ; thus their 
fear of a people's indignation indirectly caused the erection 
of their monuments and the preservation of their records. 
Their literature consisted of religious books, hymns, pray- 
ers, and incantations and novels. Its wider scientific scope 
may be discovered by studying the character of the forty- 
two books of Hermes, as described by Clemens. Frag- 
ments of these books are gradually coming to the light. 
To one class of them — the " Ceremonial Books of the 
Stolists " — belongs the "Book of the Dead." From its 
pages we quote a few significant sentences : — 

'' I am the one who knows," says the Departed. 
'•• The Osiris justified in peace is the Sun himself." 
" I went in as a hawk, and came out as a Phoenix." 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 91 

And this sentence, which might well be graven over the 
entrance of the Museum at Cambridge, and which it would 
be well for Owen and Darwin to consider as they write : — 

"The Sem-sem, or genesis of a type, is the greatest of se- 
crets V 

"Mashallah," a stele dated 4,000 B.C., and translated 
by Chabas for the ''Archaeological Review," of April 15, 
1858, contains these sentences: — 

" Having the courage which knowledge gives thee, converse 
with the ignorant as well as the learned. Is any master quite 
perfect?" 

" If it humble thee to serve a wise man, thy conduct suits thy 
own relation to God. He knows thou art among the little ojtesl 
Do not make thy heart proud against him." 

" The interior of a man is no secret to him who made it. He is 
with thee, though thou be alone." 

The plot of ''The Two Brothers," of which we have spoken 
in a theological connection, is genuine. It indicates the 
moral government of the world, and is illustrated by satirical 
drawings. In these, the world appears upside down : mice 
are eating cats ; women are seizing men ; and here, if not 
in the common heart and wit of man, the authors of the 
Batrachomyomachia and the Ecclesiazousae might have 
found inspiration ! The sacred art of Egypt was conven- 
tional, but its artist possessed skill of a very different kind. 
All the portraits in the great work of Lepsius indicate indi- 
viduality and character. Tuthmosis II. has an unmeaning 
face ; his sister's (whose escutcheons he erased) is com- 
manding. Tuthmosis, the oppressor, is handsome. Horus 
looks like the weak enthusiast he was. The Asiatic profile 
of Raamses II. is well known ; and his great father, Sethos 
I., has a still nobler face. Statues of private persons con- 
firm this impression. A squatting, attentive figure of a 
scribe, now in the Louvre, is especially remarkable. Of 



92 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 

the science and learning of the Egyptians, we have indi- 
cated enough in the course of this article. The time has 
not yet come when we dare to provoke the incredulity of 
our readers, by talking about steam-engines and telescopes. 
Lepsius found the roll of papyrus on the monuments of the 
Old Empire, and an inkstand is carried by a scribe of the 
Fourth Dynasty. Before Joseph was, Egypt had records 
and a literature ! 

In a recent lecture on Immortality, Emerson quoted the 
following words from Van Helmont : " It is my greatest de- 
sire that it might be granted unto atheists to have tasted at 
least, but only one moment, what it is intellectually to under- 
stand^ whereby they m^y foel the immortality of the mind, 
as it were, by touching; " and he then went on to say sub- 
stantially, " The man of courage is he who has tested his 
parts, knows how they will serve him, what uses they will 
endure, and of what fibre they are made ; so he who deals 
with eternal things feels himself eternal." This feeling 
Bunsen confers upon all those who study him faithfully. He 
tests his own immortal powers constantly, and makes us 
conscious of our own. 

It has been said that " Egypt's Place in History " is the 
" worst written book in the world." A book that undertakes 
to create a history, by working out an untold number of 
problems, — whose significance can only be felt, whose true 
sequence can only be perceived, by an advanced student, — 
may lay its author open to such a charge ; but no one ever 
did justice to these books without " being lifted upon unseen 
wings," as Fredrika Bremer used to say ; without being 
kindled by a glow of enthusiasm, drawing nearer to God, 
and taking hold more consciously of the soul's destiny. 
So to be uplifted and stimulated is to " deal with eternal 
things." There is a peculiar fitness in bringing the work 
of Bunsen adequately before the public at this moment. It 
is not only that the progress of years has justified him, in 



EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 93 

many positions which challenged at first the ridicule of the 
world ; but the publication of his fifth volume offers to every 
student an opportunity to investigate the questions, which 
have sustained an irreparable loss, as it would seem, by the 
recent death of Dr. Boeckh at Berlin, and Dr. Hincks at 
London. To a clear statement of his Problems and their 
key, Bunsen here adds a Dictionary and Grammar of hiero- 
glyphics, and a complete translation of the "Book of the 
Dead," of which there are several copies, and one, we hope, 
still in this country. 

To this are added interesting Egyptian texts, with inter- 
linear translations, on which the student may try the merits 
of the Grammar and Dictionary; and, still farther, a "Com- 
plete Comparison of the hitherto known Egyptian Words, 
both Old and New, with the Semitic." With such helps, 
we hope for a generation of Egyptian scholars in this coun- 
try. We especially welcome the Appendix, because it 
clearly shows the justification of Bunsen's work. True, the 
name of the Holy Mykerrinus was long a myth, and to-day 
his coffin may be handled in the British Museum ! True 
that men sneered at Bunsen, when he demanded an anti- 
quity of 3,300 years for the reign of Cheops; and, lately, 
the independent labors of a Mussulman astronomer claim 
that the pyramid of Cheops must have been erected in the 
year 3285 B.C. ! 

Still, there are not wanting respectable scholars who pro- 
duce Blair's magnificent tables of Chronology, and devoutly 
believe with him that the world was made Oct. 23, 4,004 
years b.c. Bunsen's book is a wholesome rack for a cramped 
brain. In addition, then, to the great lists of kings, the 
palace registers, and tablets of the monuments, we welcome 
in this volume the new text of the age of Cheops, the Sal- 
lier papyrus detailing the quarrels of the Shepherds with the 
native rulers ; the inscription at Tanis, which places 400 
years between Raamses II. and the Hyksos rule ; and the 

13 



94 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

inscription at Karnak, recording an eclipse. The newly 
discovered tablet at San, containing the Greek translation of 
a decree, confirms the principles of hieroglyphic interpreta- 
tion heretofore adopted. It bears witness to an immortal 
human intelligence, always competent to interpret transient 
human work. Here, too, are to be found the amended 
texts of Philo and others, who have interpreted the frag- 
mentary traditions out of which the story has been in part 
woven. It is still necessary that a competent Editor should 
be found for these volumes, who will do in detail what we 
have attempted in general. The purpose of some of the 
tables is still obscure, and Dr. Birch only edits the philology 
of this last volume. 

Caroline H. Dall. 

Boston, October $th, 1867. 



SCHOLIA. 



I ADD here, and under this title, a few facts, which I could not 
connect usefully with the text, and which may, nevertheless, 
answer some questions, to the more thoughtful students of this 
subject. 

To these, I add my own synopses of the theories of John Tay- 
lor and Piazzi Smyth, because these men have thought it their 
duty to attack Baron Bunsen, in their mistaken devotion to the 
letter of the Scripture. Bunsen's measurements of the pyramids, 
derived from the authorities extant when he wrote, have seemed 
to me of so little importance, in connection with his theories, that 
I do not advert to them. Smyth, on the other hand, considers 
their necessary and inadvertent errors fit cause for doubting the 
soundness of all Bunsen's results. It is, therefore, well to look 
closely at Piazzi Smyth's own work ; and such of its results as are 
worth considering may be found in this Appendix. 

I. 

Carthage was founded 814 B.C. This is an important date for 
Bunsen. He gets through it a synchronism. 

The fourth year of Solomon is the eleventh of Hiram, King of 
Tyre (3 Sam. v. 1 1 ; i Chron. iv. i). Hiram sent cedar and 
w^orkmen to David, and the same to Solomon. After the works 
were completed, Solomon gave Hiram twenty villages, and Hiram 
sent sailors to man Solomon's fleet. Hiram was, therefore, alive in 
the twenty-fourth year of Solomon ; therefore, the temple was built 
1014 B.C. 

B.C. 

Tyre was founded 1254 

Ninus and Semiramis were on the throne .... 1273 



96 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

Now, a papyrus of Raamses III. (1273 B.C.?) speaks of " T^yxQ 
as a city on the sea, which receives fishes from the water, and grain 
from the land," — a significant description, when we remember 
that the city was on the island as well as the main. 

II. 

B.C. 

Zoroaster's first year is 2234 

Semiramis' first year 1273 

The first year of Semiramis comes within six years after the 
last campaign of Raamses III., very soon after she conquered 
Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt became tributary, and the tomb of 
Raamses was never finished. Semiramis took Cabul between 1235 
and 1225 B.C. India had a king whose rule extended to the Indus 
at the time. Baghadatta must have been that king. 

III. 

The ancient Peruvians possessed charts, exhibiting the manner 
in vv^hich South America was peopled from Asia, through the 
islands of the Pacific. For a long time, these charts were regarded 
as clever impositions ; but, since the recent discoveries of Speke 
and Baker have demonstrated the perfect correctness of the Arab 
charts of the thirteenth century, it behooves us to look well to all 
records and mementos on our own shore. If the photographs, 
brought to the Lowell Institute by Mr. Squier, prove any thing, 
it is the solstitial character of the Druidic circles at Abury and 
Stonehenge. The sacred inclosures of Peru, still called, in the 
native tongue, " the place where the sun is tied up," are identi- 
cal in their structure ; and we think it would be well to inquire 
before it is too late, whether there are not, among the unconverted 
tribes, definite traditions as to their use. The rush sails on Lake 
Titicaca, to-day, are managed in the same way as those carved into 
the walls of the sepulchre of Raamses III. 

IV. 

The Great Pyramid: Why was it Built? Bj John Taylor. London: 
Longman, Green, & Longman, 1859; 2d edition, 1864. 

This book has a certain interest in connection with the result 
of Bunseh's inquiry as to Egypt's place in history. Its main theory 
is, that the great pyramid at Ghizeh was built as a standard of 



SCHOLIA. 97 

mensuration, which standard was determined for the ancients by 
the diameter and circumference of the globe ; the secret of its 
spherical shape having been already discovered. The azimuth of 
the entrance-passage coincides with the astronomical meridian of 
the place ; and, that the standard of dry-measure might never be 
lost, the porphyry coffer of Cheops was built in to the sealed 
structure. Mr. Taylor proceeds to his statements, without the 
least regard to the inscriptions already deciphered in the pyramids 
themselves, and apparently ignorant that a building, erected in 
conformity to the ritual of an astral faith, would of necessity ^r^- 
serve such measures, whether erected for the purpose or not ! 
Whatever we may think of the theory, the book is full of original 
suggestion, which the favorable mention of Herschel and Piazzi 
Smyth forbid the scholar to ignore. We proceed to extract the 
pith from his pages. 

The early world bore traces of an antediluvian measure, in a 
certain sacred or double cubit, — the cubit of Karnak, estimated 
by Gardner Wilkinson, — and which Taylor finds to be the basis 
of every sort of mensuration in the Great Pyramid. A proof of 
the existence of the double cubit is preserved in Herodotus. The 
priests told him, that, in the reign of Moeris, the Nile overflowed 
all the land when it rose to the height of eight cubits ; but, in the 
time of Herodotus, it had to rise to the height of sixteen cubits to 
overflow the same land. Eight cubits of Karnak, in use fifteen 
hundred years before Christ, were equal to sixteen cubits in use 
a thousand years later. Scripture is quoted (2 Chron. iii. 3) to 
show the use among the Hebrews of a double measure. The 
height of Solomon's temple, in 3 Chron. called a hundred and 
twenty, is represented in i Kings as equal to thirty cubits of the 
Jirst measure. The fourth of the cubit of Karnak was a span. 
This cubit measure, derived from the earth's belt, may have had 
a relation to the mensuration of time. " There was signified on 
the pyramid," says Herodotus, by means of Egyptian characters^ 
" how much was expended on radishes, onions, and garlic for the 
laborers ; and, as I well remember, the interpreter, reading over, 
said it amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver." Egyptian 
characters were generally pictorial, and Taylor believes the in- 
scription to have been a measure of the earth's radius or diame- 
ter, indicated by the signs still in use, — as degrees (°), minutes 
( ), and seconds (") ; these, cut in the stone, being not unlike 
vegetables. " The second of the diameter," he says, " is sixteen 



98 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

inches., of which measure there are three hundred and sixty in the 
5,760 inches at present called a second." 

" When the new earth was first measured after the Deluge [or 
Edenic convulsions, as Bunsen would say], it was found that it 
exceeded the diameter of the old earth by a distance equal to 
2)6^^6'^ miles." This change produced a change in all measures. 

"The porphyry coffer, or "tomb of Cheops," — the pyramid 
having been built to preserve the sacred antediluvian measure, — 
is then considered. The coffer stands in the chamber, in the meri- 
dian, north and south, but only half the distance from the east wall 
that it is from the west. In this coffer we find the old measure of 
the chaldron (Latin, caldarizun^ or hot-bath), not used b}^ us as a 
liquid measure, but naturally enough taking that name if measures 
w^ere shaped like this coffer or the Hebrew laver, both precisely 
like a bath. He then shows the extraordinary coincidence of Eng- 
lish measures with those of the coffer. Its contents are equal to 
4 quarters of wheat = 128 pecks = 32 bushels = 4 Hebrew 
chomicrs =128 Greek hecters =128 Roman modii. Now a pint 
is equal to a pound ; so, if our original chaldron were shaped like 
a trough (tro), from that would come Troy weight, or "trough 
weight," for solids. 

24 barlej-corns ar 32 wheat-corns = i pennyweight. 
20 pennyweights = i oz. 
12 oz. = I lb. 

There is no doubt, we suppose, that wheat originally deter- 
mined all measures ; but 8 lbs. of wheat Troy was equal in bulk to 
10 lbs. of water, Troy weight. So any vessel that would hold 10 lbs. 
of water, only held 8 lbs. of corn. Before the phrase " Avoir- 
dupois " came into use, the water-measure was expressed by the 
phrase " merchants' pound." All profits of sales were made by 
buying pounds of 16 ounces, to sell pounds of 12. The bakers' 
dozen of 13, sold out at 12, had a similar antiquity. The same 
base — i.e.., the cubit of Karnak — controlled the pyramid, Solo- 
mon's temple, the coffer of Cheops, and the chaldron of Henry 
III. The proportion of the diameter of a circle to its circumfer- 
ence is now represented by i to 3.1415927. When the pyramid 
was built, it was as I to 3.141792. This measure allows to the 
diameter 500 millions of inches, but these were English inches! 

To the measures before the Flood, we owe the sacred cubit at- 
tributed to the Ark, — the Karnak cubit of the pyramid, and the 



SCHOLIA. 99 

primitive English mile of 5,7^0 feet, an eleventh part greater than 
the present mile. The coffer contains 256 gallons of w^ater, each 
gallon weighing 10 lbs. merchants', or Avoirdupois, weight ; also 
256 gallons of wheat, each gallon weighing 10 lbs. Troy. 

In England, by law, 32 grains of middle-sized wheat are equal 
to 24 grains Troy. He shows, in this connection, the origin of the 
English word mud., in the Mut or Moar of the San-Chun-Iath. 

In commenting with interest on this book. Sir John Herschel 
says, " Mr. Taylor has the merit of pointing out, that the same 
slope belongs to any pyramid which has each of its faces superfici- 
ally equal to the square described upon its height ; " also, " that 
a belt as broad as the base of the Great Pyramid, passing round 
the earth, would contain one thousand millions of square feet." 
On his own account, he continues : — 

"The height of the pyramid, casing inclusive, from base to apex, is 
i-27o,oc)Oth of the earth's circumference. Taking the equatorial circumfer- 
ence as unity, the error of this aliquot is one part in 736 ; but, if the polar 
be assumed, it is only one part in 3,506, — the former error in defect, the 
latter in excess. So there exists somewhere a diametral section whose 
circumference is exactly 270,000 times the height of the Great Pyramid. 
Though not a meridian, it is not very remote from one." 

We believe we have indicated all the salient points of this book, 
— certainly all those of interest. 

V. 

Life and Work at the Great Pyramid in I865, with a Discussion of the 
Facts. By C. Piazzi Smyth, F.R.SS.L. & E., F.R.A S., F.R.SS.A., 
Professor of Astronomy in the University of Edinburgh, and Astrono- 
mer-Royal for Scotland. In three vols., large octavo, 600 pp. Illustra- 
tions on Stone and Wood. Edmonston & Douglas, 1867. 

These volumes contain the best measures of the Great Pyramid 
ever yet made, with plans and tables of its construction, which 
are probably the best that the world will ever have. We have to 
thank the errors of mankind for some valuable service ; for the 
mainspring of endeavor to this man of many honors seems to 
have been his horror of Bunsen's rationalism, born of his theory 
and conviction, that the Great Pyramid was built under divine 
inspiration, like the tabernacle in the desert, as an ordained 
sample of every sort of mensuration, terrestrial and celestial ! He 
is excessively indignant at Bunsen, for daring to suggest, that 



100 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

men had lived in Egypt for thousands of years before a pyramid 
was built ; but he can only get out of the dilemma of advanced 
science and civilization, w^hich Bunsen so solved, by assuming 
immediate divine inspiration for the builders ! But the vivacious 
little professor is honest ; and w^henever his figures tell a story he 
does not expect, he follow^s them faithfully, — quite sure they v\^ill 
return to their allegiance by and by : and so, to do him justice, 
they generally do. His malignity against Bunsen is extraordi- 
nary. In those five w^onderful volumes, he will never once allow 
for possible errors of the press : and while he points to the com- 
manded measures of the tabernacle, corresponding to those of the 
Great Pyramid, and the traditions of scientific meaning attached 
to the latter ; and raves away about the absence of every sign of 
idolatrous worship within it ; and reminds us of the hatred the 
Egyptians bore its builder, because his dynasty suppressed their 
abominable worships, — we are certainly willing to agree with 
him when he plants himself on this sentence : " It cannot be 
wrong to attend to actual facts ! " No, it cannot ; and these facts 
are so very interesting, that, while we echo the astronomer-royal's 
cry to M. Renan, and exclaim, "■ O Smyth, Smyth ! why did you 
not take a survey, or take photographs, before you founded so 
much history and chronology on a mechanical agreement which 
does not exist," yet we feel bound to bring out the salient points, 
and do justice to the discoveries recorded in these volumes. 

The first volume is a bright, entertaining book of travels, 
which teaches that Arabs have the dyspepsia ; that Boston thought 
it a " neat " thing, during the war, to prick Confederate flags into 
the soles of Yankee boots, which afterward tramped up and down 
the Pyramids in scorn, like ancient Pharaohs restored to life ! It 
gives us a lively account of the difficulties attendant on the con- 
struction of apparatus, and the final launching of the expedition, 
" when, by act of Private Grace, the Secretary had procured a 
bag of Austrian dollars, great pancakes of things, dedicated to 
Maria Theresa!" — which lively sentence is a good specimen of 
our professor's style. The first matter of interest is his account 
of Mariette Bey's museum at Boolak. M. Mariette went to 
Egypt, some years since, in the train of the Due de Luynes, as 
assistant excavator : but he showed so much talent as interpreter 
and explorer, that, on the departure of De Luynes, he had things 
his own way ; and, by exhibiting his own collection, induced the 
authorities at Cairo to adopt it as the basis of a national museum, 



SCHOLIA. 101 

and was appointed " Protector to all things in and about the 
monuments." Renan, in writing to the " Revue des Deux 
Mondes," praises this museum, which " has never demolished a 
morsel ; " and compares it with the museum at Berlin, for the 
creation of which the saw and hatchet were driven through the 
most precious things. Meanwhile Mariette Bey still seeks eagerly 
for inscribed stones, and with such success, that he never drives a 
pickaxe into a heap of rubbish without securing something of 
value ; and De Rouge has gone back to Paris, with six large 
volumes of hand-copied inscriptions, which Bunsen, alas ! will 
never see. Among his treasures are the tablet of Memphis ; 
sculptures of the Fourth Dynasty ; a greenish-black diorite, and 
a life-size statue of Cnephren, builder of the Great Pyramid, which 
is copied, for anybody who likes, in plaster. In this connection, 
too, we hear again of Mrs. Lieder, who did such wonders for 
female education in Egypt, thirty years ago ; and of her husband, 
Dr. Lieder, to whom Bunsen gives the credit of reviving Coptic 
in his table, where he says, " Coptic again made intelligible in 
Lieder's schools, 1834." But Dr. Lieder is no more : he died of 
cholera while Piazzi Smyth was writing. 

Scold at Bunsen as he will, our author Is obliged to go to him 
for the meaning of the word " pyramid," which, in the new 
vocabulary of the fifth volume, he finds indicated, — 

Vx^t division. 
Ment or met, the numeral X. 

So here he finds a division or measure of tens, coinciding with 
the mechanical arrangement of a five-sided, five-cornered build- 
ing, out of which his theory takes natural comfort. From the 
first rambling, vivacious volume, we take a few notes, before pro- 
ceeding to the abstract of the scientific matter In the third. The 
second volume, which we take to be the valuable and lasting por- 
tion of the work, is strict measurement and mathematics, unviti- 
ated by theory : matter, not for the critic, but for the world's 
scholars and speculators to use. 

The Great Pyramid differs from all others In four essential 
particulars : — 

1. The king's, or supposed sepulchral chamber, is a hundred 
and forty feet above ground, — a position In which no pyramid 
ever yet buried a man. 

2. The coffer In this chamber is not built in, but stands free 

14 



102 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

upon the floor : it is too large for a coffin, and no man ever saw 
its lid. Sarcophagi are always sunk in the floor, and have tightly 
fitting lids. 

3. It was expected that living men would enter and use the 
Great Pyramid ; for its exquisitely finished ventilating tubes are a 
hundred and eight}" feet long. 

4. In pyramids for burial, the passages lead to the tomb ; but 
the passages in the Great Pyramid apparently lead away from the 
king's chamber. 

We say, apparently ; but the builders left behind them a clew 
to the secret. In the lower part of the entrance passage, two 
secret key-marks, diagonal joints, carefully and expensively laid 
in stone, much harder than the rest, point to the triangular stone, 
which originally concealed the entrance to the king's chamber, 
and which fell so as to expose it during El Mamoom's excava- 
tion. 

The p3'ramid is partly built of the rock itself. Pushed to the 
northern verge of the hill on which it stands, it is partly supported 
over a ravine seventy feet deep, by its own chippings worked into 
a solid artificial embankment. Among these chippings are 
splinters of green, white, and black diorite, not yet accounted for 
by any known remains. Easy-minded readers, having seen the* 
account in Herodotus about the polished exterior of the pj^ramid, 
and knowing that trivial vestiges of it may still be seen, have 
believed what thev read ; but the matter has lonof been one of 
dispute, and we are glad that Vx^lxta Smyth's enthusiasm has 
settled the point for ever. He worked till he found the sockets 
cut in the solid rock to receive this casing ; for it was necessary 
to find them to get the pyramid's true measure. First there was 
the ladder-like exterior of the masonry, then backing stones, and 
over them the casing, right-angled at the back and bevelled on the 
exterior, the angles being always of either 128 or 52. The 
inside of these stones was whitish ; the exterior of a bright wal- 
nut-wood brown, polished, in situ^ beyond the power of any 
modern workman. At the quarries, our professor was struck with 
the economv of the work. There were no useless fragments ; 
only bases of closely adjoining artificial square pillars, sliced off* 
transversely, so that every stone measured a hundred inches in 
length and breadth. 

Not far from a hundred feet to the south-east of the great 
Sphinx, our traveller went to see one of the most wonderful exca- 



SCHOLIA. 103 

vations of Mariette Bey. It is called " Shafre's tomb," and, 
according to Renan, " is a vast temple, different from all others 
known." Twenty feet below the surface, they have excavated a 
building a hundred and thirty feet square, with ranges of square 
pillars, with beams and walls of massive, polished, red granite. 
Limestone walls, so worn as to look like ancient cliffs, surround 
it. A deep pit is dug down to a portal made of three mighty gran- 
ite blocks. The passage has a peculiar azimuthal angle. It 
emerges into a colonnaded space running north and south, having 
a similar arcade with a double colonnade starting from its centre, 
— all of red granite. A tall doorway through a granite wall looks 
into an awful room., likewise running north and south, sixty-one feet 
long, twelve and a half broad, and twenty high, of polished gran- 
ite, with a square, sepulchral well pierced through a floor of bril- 
liant crystalline alabaster, near the middle of its east side. Here 
Cnephren's statue was found, a hundred and seventy-five inches 
below the surface, — under water, in fact, — with many other 
broken things rudely hurled in, as if an enemy had done it. The 
granite which built these polished walls was brought six hundred 
miles for the purpose. 

Our author went to see this newly discovered building, as 
a sort of recreation in the midst of his hard work. When 
he returns, he describes to us four sets of grooves in the ante- 
chamber of the Great Pyramid, in which it has been supposed 
that four stone portcullises once ran up and down. Our 
author shakes his head over this ; for though three pairs are 
really grooves, reaching from ceiling to floor, the fourth still 
holds what has been happily called a "granite leaf;" and this 
is no portcullis. It is cemented into the south groove, but is 
twenty inches from the north wall. The groove reaches only as 
far as the leaf falls ; so that this never could have descended 
lower, and, if it had, it would only partly bar the passage, being 
but one third its height. This leaf is formed of two stones, one 
above the other, cemented together with the most precious 
white cement, the upper with a sort of semicircular bevelled han- 
dle, which looks as if it were made to draw the leaf upward in 
the grooves, and so disclose a secret. This is all our professor 
knows, and he leaves his reader as excited as himself over the 
evident mystery. 

Professor Smyth is greatly astonished at the justness of the 
pyramid's orientation. Nouet, in 1799, made it nineteen minutes 



104 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

of an arc out ; but, in 1S65, Smyth finds the error only four min- 
utes and a few seconds, and this he thinks was not an error, but 
intentional, as it is the same in the second pyramid. No man's 
instrumental work, not even the famous Troughton's, is perfect; 
but it was very surprising, that the amount of difference between 
the t'djo halves of Troughton's azimuth circle was greater than the 
angular difference between the azimuthal directions of axes in 
the Great Pyramid and the second p3Tamid, so very nearly had the 
ancient builders made two difficult things exactly alike. At this 
moment, the \vell-chamber in " King Shafre's tomb " gives a bet- 
ter observation of the instant of noon, than all the " time-finding 
means in Cairo." It gave a feeling almost of awe, to discover the 
same accuracy in the sockets of the casing cut in the rock : no 
socket " sights" the other precisely ; but what small error there is, 
is plainly accounted for by piles of intervening rubbish. 

At the ver}- opening of volume third, in which we are to en- 
counter a charming medley of " fact and fiction," our professor 
quotes, from Hekekyan Bey's " Chronology of Siriadic Monu- 
ments," a passage which we commend to all critics of Bunsen, and 
himself in particular : — 

" But we must be on our guard not to assign the construction of a monu- 
ment, in all cases, to the monarch whose name is most prominently legible 
on it. There was a colossal statue, of largest size, in Memphis, the cylin- 
ders of which had been so diminished by cutting down for new cartouches 
to be engraved, that a mortise was made through and through each hand 
for the insertion of new cylinders. Standard statues, of the size of life, 
had hollows in their faces for the introduction of features resembling those 
of the reigning king ! " 

In Hekekyan Bey our readers will recognize a prominent friend 
of European influence, and especially of Dr. Lieder and female 
education in Egypt. 

Postponing for the moment such peculiar notions as Professor 
Smyth may entertain, w^e w^ish to draw attention to some remarka- 
ble traits in tlie construction of the Great Pyramid, now for the first 
time distinctly brought out, and of great value to all theorists, sane 
and insane. 

I. The angle of the sides of the Great Pyramid is of precisely 
the amount to cause the linear proportion which twice the length 
of one of its sides bears to the vertical hei dit of the whole mass, 
to be that of the diameter to the circle, — the constant quantity n 
of all modern mathematics. 



SCHOLIA. 105 

2. Three trenches, which observers have always Insisted were 
used solely for the mixing of mortar, gave Professor Smyth the feel- 
ing from the beginning, that they had to do with deciding the domi- 
nant angles of the pyramid ; and from his observation he proves 
them to be azhnuth trenches., their mean determination being 51° 
51' 33". These trenches, then, were placed at the actual angles 
intentionally or unintentionally. If the former, the builders knew 
what remarkable property they could give to a pyramid, by con- 
structing its slope at the critical angle of 51° 51' ; " and we shall 
do wisely to attend with care to their other angular works." Why 
did not this consideration save you, O Professor ! from the theory 
of divine inspiration and its consequences? 

3. In its descending passage, the Great Pyramid is like all oth- 
ers ; but in the ascending, indicated by the diagonals, it is unique. 
Of the three passages, we ought to know the inclination ; but to 
compare the Grand Gallery with the celestial polar direction 
we must bore through the blocks of stone, with which it is still 
choked ! The pyramid shows only one of the two daily meridian 
transits of a pole-star particularly marked, yet accounts for, or shows 
the direction of, the other transit, and the place of the pole as 
well. 

4. The Great Pyramid stands ninety miles from the Red Sea, 
and a hundred and ten in a direct line from the Mediterranean. 
Its correct orientation has always been taken for granted ; and we 
have shown how small, and perhaps intentional, our professor 
found the error. As regards latitude, the theoretical angle is 30° ; 
what Piazzi Smyth actually found is 29° 58' 51''. Why did not the 
builders hit the mark a little more closely, carry it 69" farther north, 
and make it perfectly accurate? The answer to this question he 
finds in the topography of the region. To have carried it even 
this little to the north, would have taken it off a noble hill, and 
buried it ingloriously in a broad bay of sand. By pushing it to 
the extreme northern end of the cliff, — where one landslip had 
already occurred, and which they were compelled to fill up with 
good masonry, — they showed that they knew their error. 

5. A system of inclined passages in the rock north-east of the 
pyramid, about which there has been a good deal of speculation, 
our astronomer considers merely a model on which the masons 
tried their hand, to work out the internal figures of the p3a-amid, 
as the azimuth trenches had worked out the external angles. 
That part of the actual pyramid which was cut in the rock has 



106 EGYPT'S PLACE IN HIS TORT. 

suffered more from time than that part which is made of masonry. 
As to any changes produced by time, six different subjects of ob- 
servation, including the geological strata, combine to show a south- 
ward dip. It is only about 32", however, — hardly worth noting. 
A shining, curly, white, moss-like excrescence, appearing in the 
Grand Gallery and queen's chamber, proves to be common 
salt. 

6. Taylor taught us to look at the internal axis of the earth's 
rotation, which he estimated at five hundred millions of inches, 
for the builder's measure, — this statement being defended and 
enforced by Sir John Herschel. Taylor took Newton's sacred 
cubit, a measure always emplo3'ed by the Hebrews for sacred pur- 
poses, — twenty-five inches long. The modern French metre was 
chosen as the one ten-millionth of a quadrant of a particular meri- 
dian of the earth. The sacred cubit was the one ten-millionth of 
half the earth's axis of rotation, — also a useful measure, close on 
the length of the human arm and the human pace ; and of these 
cubits there are as many contained i7t one side of the pyramid^s 
base^ as there are days in the year ! Here is the pyramid linear 
measure : — 

I thumb-breadth, = i inch. 

I arm, roughly, = i cubit, or 25 inches. 

100 acre-sides, = i acre-side. 

25 acre-sides, = i mile. 

100 cubits, = I league. 

The cubic contents of the great coffer have been elsewhere 
shown to be equal to one Hebrew laver, or one English chaldron. 
Now for the measure of v^eight. A cubic measure being formed, 
with sides of a ten-millionth of the earth's axis of rotation, a tenth 
part of this space is to be filled with matter of the specific density 
of the earth. This mass will form the Vv'eight standard. The 
coffer measure puts the mean density at ^.'~iO. 

*j. Decimal measures are every where indicated, and show the 
coffer to be iiitentionally what it is, thinks our professor. Four 
vertical grooves divide the entrance wall of the king's chamber 
into five parts. The coffer, whose capacity is also that ascribed to 
the Ark of the Covenant, is founded on a fifty-inch measure, the 
one ten-millionth of the earth's axis of rotation. It stands in a 
room carefully divided by five equal courses of stone ; a thing not 
to be done in that hard material without extreme care. By the 
position of the floor on the lower course, the room becomes a 



SCHOLIA. 107 

measure of the same capacity as Solomon's molten sea, fifty times 
that of the coffer, — fifty and five are the ruling numbers. Then 
again the king's chamber holds an unexpected relation to the whole 
pyramid. The fiftieth course of stone in the pyramid is identical 
with tlie floor of that chamber. On it stands the coffer of fifty 
inches standard, in its tank of fifty times itself, with walls of five 
courses ; and, if that coffer's contents of water be divided by fifty 
times fifty, we get the pyramid pound, scientifically checked all 
the world over as five cubic inches of the earth's mean density ! 
We agree with our professor, that, if this is all accurate and all 
accidental, it is very bewildering. 

He goes on to show that the ventilators were constructed so as 
to create a mean temperature of what he calls one-Jifth. 

Now, whereas the king's chamber has a relation to a measure 
of fives and fifties, so the queen's chamber has a similar relation 
to a standard of twenty-five ; and the subterranean chamber was 
equally a chamber of angular measure. By calculations concern- 
ing the latter, which our readers would not care to follow, our 
professor gets a compass with divisions oi jives., w^hich he thinks 
the sailors would be grateful for ! In the seven-sided crystalline 
form of the queen's chamber, his peculiar notions lead him to 
find an index of the sabbatical week ; and he somewhere quotes 
our much-maligned Bunsen in his own support. If figures were 
ever " off* on a strike," we think they would have refused to con- 
tribute to such a result. 

The third volume contains an interesting but contemptuous 
account of the labors of Alahmoud Bey, alluded to in our article 
on Bunsen. It seems to trouble our astronomer a good deal, that 
he cannot criticise the excellence of Mahmoud's mathematical 
work. 

In his speculative advances, Smyth makes a queer choice of 
authorities ; and, whenever he brings up a peculiarly obscure 
name, he shows his real respect for Bunsen, by reporting what 
good thing the baron credited to it ! If a third of the time spent 
on the building of this pyramid was spent, as Herodotus says, in 
subterranean work, then our professor is sure that we shall yet 
see the inside of an undiscovered chamber, in which will be 
works of the magnificent diorite, whose splinters strike through 
the embankment. No man knows where this diorite came from ; 
no one has ever reported it in situ. 

Professor Smyth treats us, in closing, to Haliburton's " Essay 



108 EGTPT'S PLACE IN HISTORT. 

on the Pleiades." All nations, he thinks, once had a year of 
pleiads, before the rise of the great heathen civilizations, and in 
which is the explanation of the old festival of Hallow^e'en. This 
year began with the autumnal equinox, " the mother-night of 
the 3'ear." But, for all this, he must needs borrow of Bunsen the 
very star-maps and charts Professor Heiss prepared for him ! 
One thing he has decided, — that the Dog-star shall not rule the 
pyramid. Those who know what good vs^ork is, however, will 
always value Professor Smyth's second volume, and turn from his 
third to Bunsen's noble five, with ever-fresh delight. 



THE END. 



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X 



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